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The Age of War: from World Market to World Conquest (English Language Version)

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The Age of War: from World Market to World Conquest (English Language Version) Munich Personal RePEc Archive The Age of War: From World Market to World Conquest (English language version) Freeman, Alan July 2003 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5588/ MPRA Paper No. 5588, posted 05 Nov 2007 UTC THE AGE OF WAR: FROM WORLD MARKET TO WORLD CONQUEST Alan Freeman The University of Greenwich 8-10 July 2003 Abstract This paper presented at the Laboratori per la Critica Sociale organised by the Centro Studi Transformazione Economico-Sociali )CESTES-PR,TE,- is the English language version of ‘The age of war: From world market to world conquest’, and was also presented to the 5th Annual Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics, Nottingham Trent University, 8-10 July, 2003. .t argues that the world is entering a new age of war a political conse/uence of globalisation. Two supplementary documents contains 1ey charts on which the analysis was based one presented at the 2003 conference of the institute of globalisation studies 2oscow and the second at a 2003 seminar organised by the United Nations Association of the university of Umea Sweden 4eywords5 .mperialism6 globalisation6 divergence6 stagnation6 polarisation6 ine/uality6 world economy6 4ondratieff6 development6 Europe6 US6 value6 price6 TSS.6 temporalism6 profit rate6 deregulation6 7orld Systems Theory6 une/ual e8change6 dependency6 North-South relations THE AGE OF WAR: FROM WORLD MARKET TO WORLD CONQUEST 1 INTRODUCTION the war to end war , mark II 7hat causes war9 To get a useful answer it is vital to as1 the right /uestion. People have used violence to get their way probably since they e8isted. Nothing very practical will arise from as1ing why this is so since when we loo1 at our history we find that though humans are always warli1e they do not always ma1e war. 7hat really matters is5 when is this propensity to war brought into action and when is it suppressed9 ,ur /uestion therefore divides into two5 why does war start and what ma1es war stop9 :ut this way of posing the /uestion is still impractical. Following 11th September 2001 something new entered the world. The scale of war and its objectives went through a step change as the :ush administration pushed aside every canon of postwar stability to assert its right and establish its capability to wage war whenever wherever and however it chose. The /uestion is therefore why this kind of war9 7hat made it start9 And what will ma1e it stop9 Since this is our /uestion it is rather important to be precise about what we mean by ”this 1ind of war=. Today at this point in history war has ta1en a new form and is being deployed for new ends. 7ar is now waged to occupy territory with zero concessions to legality and as a first resort. The aim of the United States in .ra/ and in Afghanistan was the occupation and subjugation of an entire people and their territory and the political and economic control of their resources. 7ar is no longer a selective and limited instrument of statecraft but the principal policy of the :ush administration through which it wants to reshape the world. This is a new stage of history. The post-1945 world had its conflicts some of them major. Nevertheless the very phrase ”Cold 7ar= described a threat that was always present but rarely materialised. 2ass destruction was on everyone=s mind A but it didn=t actually happen. :orders and spheres of influence endured with little change until the collapse of the Soviet Union. The last time war served its present function was when the Great Powers drew the map of the modern world in blood and iron. .ronically the 2iddle East war A whose stated goal is to disarm a dictator A is the first ”7ar to end 7ars= since 1914. The self-contradictory idea of ma1ing war in order to stop war gives the game away. The restraints on the deployment of war have fallen so low that it has become its own justification. The final form of our /uestion is therefore why now9 7hat is it about the modern world that has ta1en the world bac1 to an earlier stage of history with weapons that can not merely defeat nations but annihilate them9 This paper argues that this new age of war is a political conse/uence of globalisation. .t is a new stage of history happening at a particular time A at the end of a thirty-year e8pansion of the mar1et in capital. The war is therefore the outcome of this e8pansion and the e8pression of its most fundamental limits. The paper therefore aims to understand how twentieth century globalisation led to twenty-first century war and where twenty-first century war will lead. 2 THE GLOBALISATION OF POVERT( the political triumph o. economic di a ter The conventional view is that globalisation has been an economic success but a political failure. Actually completely the reverse is true. .t has been a political triumph and an economic disaster. 30,000 7,300 28,000 6,800 26,000 World GDP 6,300 24,000 ($bn1995) 5,800 22,000 4,997 5,300 20,000 4,909 4,800 18,000 World GDP per 4,300 16,000 capita 14,000 3,800 ($1995) 12,000 3,300 10,000 2,800 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 World GDP and GDP per capita in constant 1995 dollars, converted from national currencies at current exchange rates Source: World Economic Outlook Database, University of Groningen Grow th .Project Chart 1: GDP and GDP per capita of the world constant $1995 35,000 Countries in Transition 30,000 Developing Major industrial countries 25,000 Other advanced economies 20,000 15,000 10,000 GDP per capita in 1995 dollars 1995 in GDPcapita per 5,000 - 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Chart 2: GDP per capita of the principal world sectors As chart 1 shows the absolute GDP per capita of the world measured according to the .2F=s own figures in constant 1995 dollars having risen throughout the whole of the postwar periiod has since 1992 gone down. That is the world has got poorer. As chart 2 shows this has affected the world differentially. ,ne /uarter of the world=s population in the advanced countries and so-called ”advanced industrial= countries has got richer6 the remainder has become relatively poorer and in particular the bottom /uarter of the world has become absolutely and dramatically poorer. The current stage of globalisation thus brings together two fundamental processes5 stagnation and divergence. Stagnation or decline is the slowdown in the rate of growth or accumulation of the world which began in the early seventies. Divergence is a long-term growth in inequality a separation of rich from poor nations. 10% 1970-1980 1980-2000 5% 0% -5% Major industrial countries Other advanced economies -10% Developing Countries in Transition -15% Annual percent growth in GDP per in capitaGDP , $1995 percent growth Annual Chart 3: rates of growth before and after globalisation Stagnation is a repeating process6 it has ta1en place four times so far since capitalism began5 roughly 1825-1848 18C351893 1929-194C 19D8-today. Divergence is a secular or permanent process5 it has been going on since capitalism began. Thus the most stri1ing factual result from a detailed e8amination of the world statistics produce by the .2F is that economic production or GDP per person in real dollar terms has slowed down throughout the last two decades and in the nineties has begun to decline absolutely. This is a very set trend encompassing larger and larger regions. The number of people whose income has fallen over the previous ten years has risen from 10 million in 1980 to 1.2 billion in 2000. Not everyone gets poorer5 world output has diverged and a small group of nations has continued to grow at the e8pense of the rest whose growth rate has decline precipitately. .n the nineties a new phase arose as chart 3 shows5 the rich nations began to differentiate among themselves. The stagnation of Europe throughout the 90s the financial crash of 199C and the South East Asian crisis signalled the end of a prolonged period beginning in the early fifties in which the chief rivals of the US caught up with and in decisive cases overtoo1 it in terms of the ability to produce wealth. From the mid-1950s until the beginning of the 1980s their rate of growth their rate of investment and their rate of productivity growth all decisive indicators of economic performance and competitivity by the beginning of the 1980s all e8ceeded that of the USA. 1.40 Euro Area 1.20 South-East Asia 1.00 Developing World 0.80 0.60 0.40 0.20 - 1970 1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 Chart 4: GDP per capita relative to the SA (1 $ equal, (1 $ less, ) 1 $ greater) :y the end of the last decade the USA had resumed its position as the fastest- growing nation in the 7est. .t did so however not by accelerating its own growth but by driving down that of all its chief competitors. US growth in the 90s was no larger than in the 1980s or 19C0s6 everyone else=s was lower. There is one e8ception which literally proves the rule.
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