The Geopolitical Bankruptcy Thirteen notes for the study of the changing global scenario

Recently my coeditor shared with me an interesting article by Argentine economist Mario Rapoport regarding the de-globalization and asked me “would you write about it?” My first response was the following: “Very interesting and a first contribution to a long discussion. As globalization is in crisis, the de-globalization in course can result in blind alleys and more wars. To avoid them there might be an exit through new regional blocs although Europe’s breakdown gives me pause No doubt there is a need to rethink national strategies and try to coordinate them. We should get moving on this though we might be a little older and slower.” Thus Roberto Mizrahi, as he usually does, threw me a huge challenge and I quote: “May be a first analysis, valuable without being pretentious but that could contribute to reaching a larger synthesis, could be rehearsed around the delving differences within the “older” Europe with societies that rebel against their elites: Germany still with no big traumas as it is looking from the top, the countries that that are burned out by the (Greece, Spain, and other small countries that follow them and are forced to change), Britain’s selfishness (at least from its conservative fractions) trying to get rid of the unwanted European inflow of migrants, capital controls, and other selfish concerns, unwanted tensions with Russia, the complex relationships with the former African colonies, the openings with China as well as the reaffirmation of the American leadership they are so eager to preserve, the alternative models that emerge in South East Asia and now in Latin America. And in all this half-cooked stew, among other issues, we can list: (i) how will a not so old Europe emerge? And (ii) what can we expect from Latin America and how to better navigate these old and new waters?” Some list!

This long and brainy recount of issues is beyond me, but in order not to fall behind, some remarks and lecture notes come to my mind that I will share with my patient reader.

In this small essay, I aim at contributing not “truths” but just elements and hypotheses to a discussion regarding the changing geopolitics. I hope they might help in the future research of some of the issues I have just listed.

1. First, there is no doubt that the current globalization is in crisis. The symptom is the fragmentation of important traditional geopolitical agglomerations. States and blocs are in the midst of a transition but no one really knows which would be the destiny of such reconfiguration.

In some regions of the planet, events on the ground are running ahead of their interpretation. For example, as I have stated in a previous article, Iraq no longer exists. Its de facto partition is in three sections: Kurdistan, Sunnite Iraq ran by ISIS (Daesh), and the official Iraq around Bagdad where the Shiite majority gathers. This situation reminds us of the famous phrase by Julius Caesar in his book on the Gallic Wars: omina divisa est in partes tres. All that is needed is to redraw the map.

At the same time, the 2003 American invasion of Iraq (one of the biggest strategic mistakes in the history of warfare) has ended in the reinforcement of the regional hegemony of Iran.

The internal conflicts unleashed in the rest of the Islamic world create a security belt for Israel but it is highly unstable. The short-term benefit increases the long-term tension in the Israeli-Palestinian zone.

2. Secondly, I believe it is premature to talk about “de-globalization” as there are too many links and interactions that impede a return to a time of economic autarky and national sovereignty. The only truly autarkic State that I know is the not very commendable North Korea.

It might be best advisable to talk about a global “reconfiguration,” possibly in new blocs. A potential scenario could be: a European Union divided in two, South and North, with the current Brussels model reduced to the region of the old Carolingian Empire. The “other Europe” would suffer frequent crises and variable associations.

3. Third, at the same time it is premature to talk about an alternative globalization, though the glimmerings of what could be some opportunities for a new system of international relations can already be seen. In this system, the relation China-US will be determinant of all others. See Geoffrey Pleyers Alter-Globalization: Becoming Actors in a Global Age (2011).

4. Fourth, I think that behind these changes there are a series of structural contradictions in the driving force of the current globalization; i.e., the world capitalist system. We should study the relationship between these two processes: the overproduction (how to channel the surplus) and the unconsidered population (how to keep jobs in an ever more unequal and automated world). See the recent book by Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots. Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (2015).

5. Fifth, until recently, especially at the dawn of the millennium, the surviving hegemony of the US after the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR as well as the emergent relationship between China and the US, led many to believe that a new era of “unstoppable” globalization of capital, with a neoliberal ideology as guidance and ornament, was coming. Fifteen years later, it seems that instead of a dawn we are witnessing a prolonged sunset. I therefore suggest not talking about an “advanced capitalism” but rather about a “late capitalism.” I deal with this matter in my book South of the Crisis. A Latin American Perspective on the Late Capitalist World (2010).

6. Sixth, the cycle of initial outsourcing of material production and its relocation to Asia is ending. Today it is evident that the exploitation of cheap Asian labor force and the “outward” development have served a vast process of primitive accumulation in China and other Eastern Asian countries; that are currently not only slowing down their growth but also directing it towards internal social development, with a higher organic composition of capital, better living standards, and a national market potentially larger than the American or the European.

7. Seventh, the restructuring of Chinese capitalism and its growing maturity drive them to a larger geopolitical projection in terms of external investments and larger commercial links and military challenges. There will be greater frictions within the South and East China Seas. Let us remember that in every war the immediate cause of an outbreak was a miscalculation.

8. Eighth, in mature capitalist countries, the evolution of capital towards a postindustrial society goes hand in hand with some symptoms of structural crisis. In a nutshell, the high organic composition of capital and, in particular, the automation of activities, produces a social decomposition with the characteristics I mention in paragraph nine. Thinking about this issue we should reread The Capital’s draft called Grundrisse (Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy), where Marx talks about the effects of automation of production (1857).

9. Ninth, labor loses the strength to resist and does not find stable and safe occupation. In almost every rung of social stratification, from manual labor –the blue collar stratum- up to middle-sector employees of “white collar,” the old “proletariat” has become a new “precariat.” Regarding this subject, to read and study, I recommend two texts: The Precariat. The New Dangerous Class, by Guy Standing (2011), and The New Class Conflict, by Joel Kotkin (2014).

10. Tenth, the economic surplus has two sources that together lead to a crisis. On the one hand, the concentration of income is increasing and leads to a “superior closed circuit” of speculation and financial games. On the other hand, the realization of surplus does not find a good consuming outlet in the masses of people with precarious jobs and stagnated incomes or in full regression. These two tendencies can explain the huge increase in public and private debt that is so much needed for the maintenance of the system, though unsustainable in the long and medium run. To read and study, it is imperative to consult the book by Thomas Piketty called The capital in the XXI century (2014).

11. Eleventh, the surplus is eliminated in substitutive ways of the “normal” market relations (for example, the constant increase in a “socialist sector” of the State through the military-industrial complex, disguised as “national security”) or directly in destructive forms (warlike, civic-military emergencies, anti-catastrophe, or anti-insurgence operations). These maneuvers also let in part absorb or dispose of the “human surplus” that does not find a productive occupation. Regarding the demise of the classical war and the rise of the asymmetric war as well as other inorganic forms of armed conflict, it is wise to read the work of Martin Van Creveld, in particular his famous first book The Transformation of War (1991).

12. Twelfth, the disintegration of preexistent class relationships leads to ways of resistance and protest that are not able to coalesce in organized social movements. Instead, religious extremisms, messianic, identity-based and neo fascist movements wander around. In some regions of the planet, that disintegration produces a historic regression to a pre-state generalized violence, as in the time of the European Thirty-Year War. To review the history we are repeating, see the book Furies: War in Europe 1450-1700 (2013). It is worth rereading the book by the Brazilian sociologist Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, O mesianismo no Brasil e no mundo (1966).

13. Thirteenth, and as befits the bad-luck number, we are facing various decades of fragmentation and violent conflicts, at the end of which there will be a globalized and highly technological re-edition of the old Westphalia peace [1].