Re: Globalization, the prequel

["Paul Phillips" <phillp2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael,
This analysis could equally be applied to the Canadian case where
the pathetic Chretien sucks up to Bush while the independist PQ
implements a soft social democratic social program and the racist
right-wing Alliance attacks gays and lesbians, women, abortion
and champions the barbaric death penalty. Ugh!

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba

On 28 Feb 01, at 18:17, Keaney Michael wrote:


>
> The latter point was the substance of one of Nestor's mailings at around the
> time we were discussing Argentina's economic history and current prospects.
> Recently on the Marxism list there was an involved discussion of Scottish
> nationalism, which is not a clear cut case if the divisions among leftists
> on the subject are anything to go by. In fact the discussion on the Marxism
> list echoed that being conducted in the pages of New Left Review between Tom
> Nairn and J.G.A. Pocock. Apart from the difficulty of conceiving of
> "Scotland" as a weak, peripheral nation (especially difficult given some of
> the more fanciful claims of romantic nationalists who possess eternal
> victimhood vis a vis "the English") there is the effect of greater Scottish
> autonomy upon the rest of the UK. The Pocock line, echoed by many on the
> left (especially the English left), is that Scottish nationalism/separatism
> will breed only reactionary English nationalism and should thus be avoided.
> This ignores the fact that reactionary English nationalism was the hallmark
> of Thatcherism and led to the rebirth of Scottish nationalism as a
> progressive movement. The current state of the British Conservative Party
> highlights the sorry legacy of Mrs T. Wiped out in Scotland as an electoral
> force, it is now dominated by an agenda set largely by Conrad Black/Robert
> Conquest, which means very little to people outside of the home counties of
> England. It also ignores the positive spillovers that might accrue to an
> English left able to point to the gains achieved by progressive-led Scottish
> autonomy (at the moment, better representation of local interests, the
> scrapping of fees for undergraduate higher education, and now the promise of
> free long term care for the elderly).
>
> Part of the problem of conceiving of "Scotland", as a part of Britain, as
> weak and peripheral is the legacy of the British empire. As with events in
> the South Atlantic in 1982, this still plays an important role (Thatcher
> certainly made Britain grate again). But Blair's craven apologism for the
> NATO Yugoslavia adventure and the recent Baghdad bombing ought to highlight
> just how absolutely dependent upon US support the British regime really is.
> Weak and peripheral is exactly how a grand strategist and foreign policy
> sage like Zbigniew Brzezinski sees Britain (in The Grand Chessboard), and
> he's not wrong (for once). Blair/Cook/Robertson's energetic support for US
> imperialism, together with Gordon Brown's constant lauding of US economic
> success, serves to demonstrate the utterly abject position of Britain in any
> assessment of world power. British delusions are served by reference to the
> history of empire and its institutional hangover (the Commonwealth, itself
> wrecked by Thatcher and her attitude towards sanctions against South
> Africa), together with the permanent seat on the UN Security Council (an
> anachronism if ever there was). In order to retain that seat Britain must
> ask how high whenever the US says "jump!" What a blow to misplaced pride it
> would be were that seat to become the property of the European Union (and
> occupied in rotation by EU member countries) or, even worse, Germany alone.
> It's bad enough having the French there, for gawd's sake. This dependency
> culture has existed for long enough, as when LBJ threatened to pull the plug
> on Harold Wilson when the latter wanted to pursue a policy of scaling back
> British military commitments in the 1960s. The UK could simply not afford
> these. But withdrawal from East of Suez (as the policy was called) would
> send a negative signal regarding Britain's position on the Vietnam war. Just
> to make sure it didn't happen, LBJ agreed to continue supporting Britain's
> balance of payments deficit (see Clive Ponting, "Breach of Promise"). So
> it's not just certain British folks who need to get their heads screwed on
> straight when assessing the true extent of UK power and influence.
>
> As no less a "realist" than Samuel Huntington argues, globalisation is going
> to unsettle a lot of vested interests. He argues that the most likely
> response of this latest phase of capitalist development is a reversion to
> older certainties based on ethnic and religious grounds. Without an active,
> grounded left to offer a viable pathway, there will be no shortage of Pat
> Buchanans, Pat Robertsons and tough-lovin' compassionate conservatives to
> provide plausible diagnoses of our collective plight and present nasty,
> reactionary prescriptions in quick succession (see the resurrection of
> Pauline Hanson in Australia, the BJP in India, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, ad
> nauseam). Nationalistic defence of material interests is a given. It's up to
> the left to provide the internationalist perspective that's sorely needed.
>
> Michael K.
>