08-23-2009, 03:48 PM
Constructing the Political Structure of a Global Government
Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton administration from 1994 to 2001, is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission and is currently President of the Brookings Institution, a prominent US think tank. In 1992, before becoming Deputy Secretary of State, he wrote an article for Time Magazine originally titled, “The Birth of the Global Nation,” which has now, in the Time Magazine archives, been renamed “America Abroad.” In the article, he states that within the next 100 years, “nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. A phrase briefly fashionable in the mid-20th century -- "citizen of the world" -- will have assumed real meaning by the end of the 21st.”
Interestingly, Talbott endorses the social constructivist perspective of nation-states and international order, stating that, “All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary. Through the ages, there has been an overall trend toward larger units claiming sovereignty and, paradoxically, a gradual diminution of how much true sovereignty any one country actually has.”
He explained that empires “were a powerful force for obliterating natural and demographic barriers and forging connections among far-flung parts of the world,” and following that, “Empire eventually yielded to the nation-state,” and that, “The main goal driving the process of political expansion and consolidation was conquest. The big absorbed the small, the strong the weak. National might made international right. Such a world was in a more or less constant state of war.” Talbott states that, “perhaps national sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all.”
He continued, saying that, “it has taken the events in our own wondrous and terrible century to clinch the case for world government. With the advent of electricity, radio and air travel, the planet has become smaller than ever, its commercial life freer, its nations more interdependent and its conflicts bloodier.” Further, “Each world war inspired the creation of an international organization, the League of Nations in the 1920s and the United Nations in the '40s.” He explained, “The plot thickened with the heavy-breathing arrival on the scene of a new species of ideology -- expansionist totalitarianism -- as perpetrated by the Nazis and the Soviets. It threatened the very idea of democracy and divided the world. [Thus] The advocacy of any kind of world government became highly suspect.” However, as Talbott points out, Soviet expansion led the way for NATO expansion, and “The cold war also saw the European Community pioneer the kind of regional cohesion that may pave the way for globalism.”
On top of that, “the free world formed multilateral financial institutions that depend on member states' willingness to give up a degree of sovereignty. The International Monetary Fund can virtually dictate fiscal policies, even including how much tax a government should levy on its citizens. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade regulates how much duty a nation can charge on imports. These organizations can be seen as the protoministries of trade, finance and development for a united world.” In addressing crises, Talbott wrote that, “Globalization has also contributed to the spread of terrorism, drug trafficking, AIDS and environmental degradation. But because those threats are more than any one nation can cope with on its own, they constitute an incentive for international cooperation.” Thus, out of crisis, comes opportunity; out of chaos comes order.
In prescribing a solution, Talbott postulates that, “The best mechanism for democracy, whether at the level of the multinational state or that of the planet as a whole, is not an all-powerful Leviathan or centralized superstate, but a federation, a union of separate states that allocate certain powers to a central government while retaining many others for themselves.”[56]
In a 1974 issue of Foreign Affairs, Richard N. Gardner wrote about the formation of the New World Order. Gardner, a former American ambassador to the United Nations, Italy and Spain, is also a member of the Trilateral Commission. In his article, The Hard Road to World Order, Gardner wrote that, “The quest for a world structure that secures peace, advances human rights and provides the conditions for economic progress—for what is loosely called world order—has never seemed more frustrating but at the same time strangely hopeful.”[57] He explained that, “few people retain much confidence in the more ambitious strategies for world order that bad wide backing a generation ago—‘world federalism,’ ‘charter review,’ and "world peace through world law’.” Further, “The same considerations suggest the doubtful utility of bolding a [UN] Charter review conference.”[58]
Gardner wrote, “If instant world government, Charter review, and a greatly strengthened International Court do not provide the answers, what hope for progress is there? The answer will not satisfy those who seek simple solutions to complex problems, but it comes down essentially to this: The hope for the foreseeable future lies, not in building up a few ambitious central institutions of universal membership and general jurisdiction as was envisaged at the end of the last war, but rather in the much more decentralized, disorderly and pragmatic process of inventing or adapting institutions of limited jurisdiction and selected membership to deal with specific problems on a case-by-case basis, as the necessity for cooperation is perceived by the relevant nations.”
He then stated, “In short, the "house of world order" will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great "booming, buzzing confusion," to use William James' famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.”[59]
In the 2001 issue of Foreign Affairs, Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss wrote an article titled, “Toward Global Parliament.” They wrote that, “International governance is no longer limited to such traditional fare as defining international borders, protecting diplomats, and proscribing the use of force. Many issues of global policy that directly affect citizens are now being shaped by the international system. Workers can lose their jobs as a result of decisions made at the WTO or within regional trade regimes.”[60] In 2006, a UN report stated that, “the nation-state is an old-fashioned concept that has no role to play in a modern globalised world.”[61]
Further, “As with citizen groups, elite business participation in the international system is becoming institutionalized. The best example is the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In the 1980s, the WEF transformed itself from an organization devoted to humdrum management issues into a dynamic political forum. Once a year, a thousand of the world s most powerful business executives get together with another thousand of the world's senior policymakers to participate in a week of roundtables and presentations. The WEF also provides ongoing arenas for discussion and recommendations on shaping global policy.” They continue in explaining that, “The Davos assembly and overlapping networks of corporate elites, such as the International Chamber of Commerce, have been successful in shaping compatible global policies. Their success has come in the expansion of international trade regimes, the modest regulation of capital markets, the dominance of neoliberal market philosophy, and the supportive collaboration of most governments, especially those of rich countries.”[62]
In explaining the purpose of a global parliament, essentially to address the “democratic deficit” created by international organizations, the authors wrote that, “Some business leaders would certainly oppose a global parliament because it would broaden popular decision-making and likely press for transnational regulations. But others are coming to believe that the democratic deficit must be closed by some sort of stakeholder accommodation. After all, many members of the managerial class who were initially hostile to such reform came to realize that the New Deal—or its social-democratic equivalent in Europe—was necessary to save capitalism. Many business leaders today similarly agree that democratization is necessary to make globalization politically acceptable throughout the world.” Essentially, its purpose would be to give globalization “grassroots acceptance and legitimacy.”[63]
David Rothkopf, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration, former managing director of Kissinger and Associates, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote a book titled, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making. As a member of that “superclass,” his writing should provide a necessary insight into the construction of this “New World Order.” He states that, “In a world of global movements and threats that don’t present their passports at national borders, it is no longer possible for a nation-state acting alone to fulfill its portion of the social contract.” He wrote that, “progress will continue to be made,” however, it will be challenging, because it “undercuts many national and local power structures and cultural concepts that have foundations deep in the bedrock of human civilization, namely the notion of sovereignty.” He further wrote that, “Mechanisms of global governance are more achievable in today’s environment,” and that these mechanisms “are often creative with temporary solutions to urgent problems that cannot wait for the world to embrace a bigger and more controversial idea like real global government.”[64]
Jacques Attali, founder and former President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and economic adviser to French President Nicholas Sarkozy, interviewed on EuroNews, said that, “either we’re heading towards a world government or we’re going to put national issues first.” The interviewer stated that the idea of world government will frighten many people, to which Attali responded, “Indeed, that’s only to be expected, because it seems like a fantasy. But there is already global authority in many areas,” and that, “even if it’s hard to think of a European government at the moment, which is there, but very weak, Europe can at least press on its experience to the world. If they’re not capable of creating an economic framework along side a political framework, then they’re never going to do it on a global scale. And then the world economic model will break up, and we’ll be back to the Great Depression.”[65]
In December of 2008, the Financial Times published an article titled, “And Now for A World Government,” in which the author, former Bilderberg attendee, Gideon Rachman, wrote that, “for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible,” and that, “A ‘world government’ would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.”
He stated that, “it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a ‘global war on terror’.” He wrote that the European model could “go global” and that a world government “could be done,” as “The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.” He quoted an adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy as saying, “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government,” and that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law.” However, Rachman states that any push towards a global government “will be a painful, slow process.” He then states that a key problem in this push can be explained with an example from the EU, which “has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for ‘ever closer union’ have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic. [Emphasis added]”[66]
In November of 2008, the United States National Intelligence Council (NIC), the US intelligence community’s “center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking,” released a report that it produced in collaboration with numerous think tanks, consulting firms, academic institutions and hundreds of other experts, among them are the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Wilson Center, RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, Texas A&M University, the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House in London.[67]
Outlining the global trends that the world will be going through up to the year 2025, the report states that the financial crisis “will require long-term efforts to establish a new international system.” It suggests that as the “China-model” for development becomes increasingly attractive, there may be a “decline in democratization” for emerging economies, authoritarian regimes, and “weak democracies frustrated by years of economic underperformance.” Further, the dollar will cease to be the global reserve currency, as there would likely be a “move away from the dollar.”[68]
Further, the dollar will become “something of a first among equals in a basket of currencies by 2025. This could occur suddenly in the wake of a crisis, or gradually with global rebalancing.”[69] The report elaborates on the construction of a new international system, stating that, “By 2025, nation-states will no longer be the only – and often not the most important – actors on the world stage and the ‘international system’ will have morphed to accommodate the new reality. But the transformation will be incomplete and uneven.” Further, it would be “unlikely to see an overarching, comprehensive, unitary approach to global governance. Current trends suggest that global governance in 2025 will be a patchwork of overlapping, often ad hoc and fragmented efforts, with shifting coalitions of member nations, international organizations, social movements, NGOs, philanthropic foundations, and companies.” It also notes that, “Most of the pressing transnational problems – including climate change, regulation of globalized financial markets, migration, failing states, crime networks, etc. – are unlikely to be effectively resolved by the actions of individual nation-states. The need for effective global governance will increase faster than existing mechanisms can respond.”[70]
The report discusses regionalism, and stated that, “Asian regionalism would have global implications, possibly sparking or reinforcing a trend toward three trade and financial clusters that could become quasi-blocs (North America, Europe, and East Asia).” These blocs “would have implications for the ability to achieve future global World Trade Organization agreements and regional clusters could compete in the setting of trans-regional product standards for IT, biotech, nanotech, intellectual property rights, and other ‘new economy’ products.”[71]
In discussing democracy and democratization, the report stated that, “advances are likely to slow and globalization will subject many recently democratized countries to increasing social and economic pressures that could undermine liberal institutions.” This is largely because “the better economic performance of many authoritarian governments could sow doubts among some about democracy as the best form of government. The surveys we consulted indicated that many East Asians put greater emphasis on good management, including increasing standards of livings, than democracy.” Further, “even in many well-established democracies, surveys show growing frustration with the current workings of democratic government and questioning among elites over the ability of democratic governments to take the bold actions necessary to deal rapidly and effectively with the growing number of transnational challenges.”[72] In other words, “well established democracies,” such as those in Western Europe and North America, will, through successive crises (climate, finance, war), erode and replace their democratic systems of government with totalitarian structures that are able to “take the bold actions necessary” to deal with “transnational challenges.”
David Rockefeller wrote in his book, Memoirs, that, “For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure--one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” (Empahsis added) [73]
The Global Economic Crisis in Context
The current global economic crisis has its roots not in the Bush administration, which is linear and diluted thinking at best, but in the systematic nature of the global capitalist system. Crisis is not separate from capital; crisis is capitalist expansion. In addressing the foundations of the economic crisis, neo-Marxist theory can help explain much of the actions and functions that led to the crisis.
In 2006, Walden Bello wrote an article for Third World Quarterly, in which he explained that, “The crisis of globalisation and over-accumulation is one of the three central crises that are currently eroding US hegemony. The other two are the over-extension of US military power and the crisis of legitimacy of liberal democracy.” He explained that, “Monetary manipulation, via the high interest rate regime initiated by Federal Reserve Chief Paul Volcker in the late 1980s, while directed at fighting inflation, was also geared strategically at channeling global savings to the USA to fuel economic expansion. One key consequence of this momentous move was the Third World debt crisis of the early 1980s, which ended the boom of the economies of the South and led to their resubordination to the Northern capitalist centres.”[74]
The economic foundations of the current crisis were laid in the “Clinton globalist project.” As Bello explained, “The administration embraced globalisation as its ‘Grand Strategy’—that is, its fundamental foreign policy posture towards the world.” Further, “The dominant position of the USA allowed the liberal faction of the US capitalist class to act as a leading edge of a transnational ruling elite in the process of formation—a transnational elite alliance that could act to promote the comprehensive interest of the international capitalist class.”[75]
Bello then explained that, “the dominant dynamic of global capitalism during the Clinton period—one that was the source of its strength as well as its Achilles’ Heel—was not the movement of productive capital but the gyrations of finance capital.” The dominance of finance capital was “a result of the declining profitability of industry brought about by the crisis of overproduction. By 1997 profits in US industry had stopped growing. Financial speculation, or what one might conceptualise as the squeezing of value from already created value, became the most dynamic source of profitability.” This was termed “financialization,” and it had many components that composed its structure and led way for its dominance. Among these were the “Elimination of restrictions dating back to the 1930s that had created a Chinese Wall between investment banking and commercial banking in the USA opened up a new era of rapid consolidation in the US financial sector.”[76]
Specifically, this is in reference to the repealing of the Glass-Steagall Act, put in place in 1933 in response to the actions that created the Great Depression, which undertook banking reforms, specifically those designed to limit speculation. In 1987, the Federal Reserve Board voted to ease regulations under Glass-Steagall, after hearing “proposals from Citicorp, J.P. Morgan and Bankers Trust advocating the loosening of Glass-Steagall restrictions to allow banks to handle several underwriting businesses, including commercial paper, municipal revenue bonds, and mortgage-backed securities.” And, “In August 1987, Alan Greenspan -- formerly a director of J.P. Morgan and a proponent of banking deregulation – [became] chairma...
Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton administration from 1994 to 2001, is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission and is currently President of the Brookings Institution, a prominent US think tank. In 1992, before becoming Deputy Secretary of State, he wrote an article for Time Magazine originally titled, “The Birth of the Global Nation,” which has now, in the Time Magazine archives, been renamed “America Abroad.” In the article, he states that within the next 100 years, “nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. A phrase briefly fashionable in the mid-20th century -- "citizen of the world" -- will have assumed real meaning by the end of the 21st.”
Interestingly, Talbott endorses the social constructivist perspective of nation-states and international order, stating that, “All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary. Through the ages, there has been an overall trend toward larger units claiming sovereignty and, paradoxically, a gradual diminution of how much true sovereignty any one country actually has.”
He explained that empires “were a powerful force for obliterating natural and demographic barriers and forging connections among far-flung parts of the world,” and following that, “Empire eventually yielded to the nation-state,” and that, “The main goal driving the process of political expansion and consolidation was conquest. The big absorbed the small, the strong the weak. National might made international right. Such a world was in a more or less constant state of war.” Talbott states that, “perhaps national sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all.”
He continued, saying that, “it has taken the events in our own wondrous and terrible century to clinch the case for world government. With the advent of electricity, radio and air travel, the planet has become smaller than ever, its commercial life freer, its nations more interdependent and its conflicts bloodier.” Further, “Each world war inspired the creation of an international organization, the League of Nations in the 1920s and the United Nations in the '40s.” He explained, “The plot thickened with the heavy-breathing arrival on the scene of a new species of ideology -- expansionist totalitarianism -- as perpetrated by the Nazis and the Soviets. It threatened the very idea of democracy and divided the world. [Thus] The advocacy of any kind of world government became highly suspect.” However, as Talbott points out, Soviet expansion led the way for NATO expansion, and “The cold war also saw the European Community pioneer the kind of regional cohesion that may pave the way for globalism.”
On top of that, “the free world formed multilateral financial institutions that depend on member states' willingness to give up a degree of sovereignty. The International Monetary Fund can virtually dictate fiscal policies, even including how much tax a government should levy on its citizens. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade regulates how much duty a nation can charge on imports. These organizations can be seen as the protoministries of trade, finance and development for a united world.” In addressing crises, Talbott wrote that, “Globalization has also contributed to the spread of terrorism, drug trafficking, AIDS and environmental degradation. But because those threats are more than any one nation can cope with on its own, they constitute an incentive for international cooperation.” Thus, out of crisis, comes opportunity; out of chaos comes order.
In prescribing a solution, Talbott postulates that, “The best mechanism for democracy, whether at the level of the multinational state or that of the planet as a whole, is not an all-powerful Leviathan or centralized superstate, but a federation, a union of separate states that allocate certain powers to a central government while retaining many others for themselves.”[56]
In a 1974 issue of Foreign Affairs, Richard N. Gardner wrote about the formation of the New World Order. Gardner, a former American ambassador to the United Nations, Italy and Spain, is also a member of the Trilateral Commission. In his article, The Hard Road to World Order, Gardner wrote that, “The quest for a world structure that secures peace, advances human rights and provides the conditions for economic progress—for what is loosely called world order—has never seemed more frustrating but at the same time strangely hopeful.”[57] He explained that, “few people retain much confidence in the more ambitious strategies for world order that bad wide backing a generation ago—‘world federalism,’ ‘charter review,’ and "world peace through world law’.” Further, “The same considerations suggest the doubtful utility of bolding a [UN] Charter review conference.”[58]
Gardner wrote, “If instant world government, Charter review, and a greatly strengthened International Court do not provide the answers, what hope for progress is there? The answer will not satisfy those who seek simple solutions to complex problems, but it comes down essentially to this: The hope for the foreseeable future lies, not in building up a few ambitious central institutions of universal membership and general jurisdiction as was envisaged at the end of the last war, but rather in the much more decentralized, disorderly and pragmatic process of inventing or adapting institutions of limited jurisdiction and selected membership to deal with specific problems on a case-by-case basis, as the necessity for cooperation is perceived by the relevant nations.”
He then stated, “In short, the "house of world order" will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great "booming, buzzing confusion," to use William James' famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.”[59]
In the 2001 issue of Foreign Affairs, Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss wrote an article titled, “Toward Global Parliament.” They wrote that, “International governance is no longer limited to such traditional fare as defining international borders, protecting diplomats, and proscribing the use of force. Many issues of global policy that directly affect citizens are now being shaped by the international system. Workers can lose their jobs as a result of decisions made at the WTO or within regional trade regimes.”[60] In 2006, a UN report stated that, “the nation-state is an old-fashioned concept that has no role to play in a modern globalised world.”[61]
Further, “As with citizen groups, elite business participation in the international system is becoming institutionalized. The best example is the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In the 1980s, the WEF transformed itself from an organization devoted to humdrum management issues into a dynamic political forum. Once a year, a thousand of the world s most powerful business executives get together with another thousand of the world's senior policymakers to participate in a week of roundtables and presentations. The WEF also provides ongoing arenas for discussion and recommendations on shaping global policy.” They continue in explaining that, “The Davos assembly and overlapping networks of corporate elites, such as the International Chamber of Commerce, have been successful in shaping compatible global policies. Their success has come in the expansion of international trade regimes, the modest regulation of capital markets, the dominance of neoliberal market philosophy, and the supportive collaboration of most governments, especially those of rich countries.”[62]
In explaining the purpose of a global parliament, essentially to address the “democratic deficit” created by international organizations, the authors wrote that, “Some business leaders would certainly oppose a global parliament because it would broaden popular decision-making and likely press for transnational regulations. But others are coming to believe that the democratic deficit must be closed by some sort of stakeholder accommodation. After all, many members of the managerial class who were initially hostile to such reform came to realize that the New Deal—or its social-democratic equivalent in Europe—was necessary to save capitalism. Many business leaders today similarly agree that democratization is necessary to make globalization politically acceptable throughout the world.” Essentially, its purpose would be to give globalization “grassroots acceptance and legitimacy.”[63]
David Rothkopf, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration, former managing director of Kissinger and Associates, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote a book titled, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making. As a member of that “superclass,” his writing should provide a necessary insight into the construction of this “New World Order.” He states that, “In a world of global movements and threats that don’t present their passports at national borders, it is no longer possible for a nation-state acting alone to fulfill its portion of the social contract.” He wrote that, “progress will continue to be made,” however, it will be challenging, because it “undercuts many national and local power structures and cultural concepts that have foundations deep in the bedrock of human civilization, namely the notion of sovereignty.” He further wrote that, “Mechanisms of global governance are more achievable in today’s environment,” and that these mechanisms “are often creative with temporary solutions to urgent problems that cannot wait for the world to embrace a bigger and more controversial idea like real global government.”[64]
Jacques Attali, founder and former President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and economic adviser to French President Nicholas Sarkozy, interviewed on EuroNews, said that, “either we’re heading towards a world government or we’re going to put national issues first.” The interviewer stated that the idea of world government will frighten many people, to which Attali responded, “Indeed, that’s only to be expected, because it seems like a fantasy. But there is already global authority in many areas,” and that, “even if it’s hard to think of a European government at the moment, which is there, but very weak, Europe can at least press on its experience to the world. If they’re not capable of creating an economic framework along side a political framework, then they’re never going to do it on a global scale. And then the world economic model will break up, and we’ll be back to the Great Depression.”[65]
In December of 2008, the Financial Times published an article titled, “And Now for A World Government,” in which the author, former Bilderberg attendee, Gideon Rachman, wrote that, “for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible,” and that, “A ‘world government’ would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.”
He stated that, “it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a ‘global war on terror’.” He wrote that the European model could “go global” and that a world government “could be done,” as “The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.” He quoted an adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy as saying, “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government,” and that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law.” However, Rachman states that any push towards a global government “will be a painful, slow process.” He then states that a key problem in this push can be explained with an example from the EU, which “has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for ‘ever closer union’ have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic. [Emphasis added]”[66]
In November of 2008, the United States National Intelligence Council (NIC), the US intelligence community’s “center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking,” released a report that it produced in collaboration with numerous think tanks, consulting firms, academic institutions and hundreds of other experts, among them are the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Wilson Center, RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, Texas A&M University, the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House in London.[67]
Outlining the global trends that the world will be going through up to the year 2025, the report states that the financial crisis “will require long-term efforts to establish a new international system.” It suggests that as the “China-model” for development becomes increasingly attractive, there may be a “decline in democratization” for emerging economies, authoritarian regimes, and “weak democracies frustrated by years of economic underperformance.” Further, the dollar will cease to be the global reserve currency, as there would likely be a “move away from the dollar.”[68]
Further, the dollar will become “something of a first among equals in a basket of currencies by 2025. This could occur suddenly in the wake of a crisis, or gradually with global rebalancing.”[69] The report elaborates on the construction of a new international system, stating that, “By 2025, nation-states will no longer be the only – and often not the most important – actors on the world stage and the ‘international system’ will have morphed to accommodate the new reality. But the transformation will be incomplete and uneven.” Further, it would be “unlikely to see an overarching, comprehensive, unitary approach to global governance. Current trends suggest that global governance in 2025 will be a patchwork of overlapping, often ad hoc and fragmented efforts, with shifting coalitions of member nations, international organizations, social movements, NGOs, philanthropic foundations, and companies.” It also notes that, “Most of the pressing transnational problems – including climate change, regulation of globalized financial markets, migration, failing states, crime networks, etc. – are unlikely to be effectively resolved by the actions of individual nation-states. The need for effective global governance will increase faster than existing mechanisms can respond.”[70]
The report discusses regionalism, and stated that, “Asian regionalism would have global implications, possibly sparking or reinforcing a trend toward three trade and financial clusters that could become quasi-blocs (North America, Europe, and East Asia).” These blocs “would have implications for the ability to achieve future global World Trade Organization agreements and regional clusters could compete in the setting of trans-regional product standards for IT, biotech, nanotech, intellectual property rights, and other ‘new economy’ products.”[71]
In discussing democracy and democratization, the report stated that, “advances are likely to slow and globalization will subject many recently democratized countries to increasing social and economic pressures that could undermine liberal institutions.” This is largely because “the better economic performance of many authoritarian governments could sow doubts among some about democracy as the best form of government. The surveys we consulted indicated that many East Asians put greater emphasis on good management, including increasing standards of livings, than democracy.” Further, “even in many well-established democracies, surveys show growing frustration with the current workings of democratic government and questioning among elites over the ability of democratic governments to take the bold actions necessary to deal rapidly and effectively with the growing number of transnational challenges.”[72] In other words, “well established democracies,” such as those in Western Europe and North America, will, through successive crises (climate, finance, war), erode and replace their democratic systems of government with totalitarian structures that are able to “take the bold actions necessary” to deal with “transnational challenges.”
David Rockefeller wrote in his book, Memoirs, that, “For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure--one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” (Empahsis added) [73]
The Global Economic Crisis in Context
The current global economic crisis has its roots not in the Bush administration, which is linear and diluted thinking at best, but in the systematic nature of the global capitalist system. Crisis is not separate from capital; crisis is capitalist expansion. In addressing the foundations of the economic crisis, neo-Marxist theory can help explain much of the actions and functions that led to the crisis.
In 2006, Walden Bello wrote an article for Third World Quarterly, in which he explained that, “The crisis of globalisation and over-accumulation is one of the three central crises that are currently eroding US hegemony. The other two are the over-extension of US military power and the crisis of legitimacy of liberal democracy.” He explained that, “Monetary manipulation, via the high interest rate regime initiated by Federal Reserve Chief Paul Volcker in the late 1980s, while directed at fighting inflation, was also geared strategically at channeling global savings to the USA to fuel economic expansion. One key consequence of this momentous move was the Third World debt crisis of the early 1980s, which ended the boom of the economies of the South and led to their resubordination to the Northern capitalist centres.”[74]
The economic foundations of the current crisis were laid in the “Clinton globalist project.” As Bello explained, “The administration embraced globalisation as its ‘Grand Strategy’—that is, its fundamental foreign policy posture towards the world.” Further, “The dominant position of the USA allowed the liberal faction of the US capitalist class to act as a leading edge of a transnational ruling elite in the process of formation—a transnational elite alliance that could act to promote the comprehensive interest of the international capitalist class.”[75]
Bello then explained that, “the dominant dynamic of global capitalism during the Clinton period—one that was the source of its strength as well as its Achilles’ Heel—was not the movement of productive capital but the gyrations of finance capital.” The dominance of finance capital was “a result of the declining profitability of industry brought about by the crisis of overproduction. By 1997 profits in US industry had stopped growing. Financial speculation, or what one might conceptualise as the squeezing of value from already created value, became the most dynamic source of profitability.” This was termed “financialization,” and it had many components that composed its structure and led way for its dominance. Among these were the “Elimination of restrictions dating back to the 1930s that had created a Chinese Wall between investment banking and commercial banking in the USA opened up a new era of rapid consolidation in the US financial sector.”[76]
Specifically, this is in reference to the repealing of the Glass-Steagall Act, put in place in 1933 in response to the actions that created the Great Depression, which undertook banking reforms, specifically those designed to limit speculation. In 1987, the Federal Reserve Board voted to ease regulations under Glass-Steagall, after hearing “proposals from Citicorp, J.P. Morgan and Bankers Trust advocating the loosening of Glass-Steagall restrictions to allow banks to handle several underwriting businesses, including commercial paper, municipal revenue bonds, and mortgage-backed securities.” And, “In August 1987, Alan Greenspan -- formerly a director of J.P. Morgan and a proponent of banking deregulation – [became] chairma...