February 15, 2005
Kamloops Daily News



Globalization is dead, long live the democratic nation
state.

Good ideas last many decades, lesser ones not as long.  The
wild open-market era that started in the 1880s lasted 30
years until the depression.  That era was followed by social
reform which lasted 45 years. 

Globalization succeeded social reform in the 1970s.  Now, it
too has lost its vitality says Canadian author John Ralston
Saul.   It’s surprising that globalization lasted as long as
it did.

Globalization filled the vacuum left when social reform lost
it’s way.  Economist J.M.Keynes  suggested state
intervention as a way out of the depression left in the
debris of the open-market era.  Keynesian economics provided
decades of employment, good wages, and a expansion of the
middle class.

Then liberal administrators began to loose sight of the
plan.  By 1970, social reform was adrift in the endless and
directionless details of management.  An old idea was fading
and bureaucrats could not breath new life into it.

With globalization,  public good is ostensibly a natural
outcome of unfettered market.  The old wild open-market era
was revived with the glitter of technology and the instant
flow of capital.

The supposed beauty of globalization was that no one had to
do anything - - the invisible hands of the marketplace would
intervene for the eventual good of all.   Politicians liked
globalization because no one was responsible when things
went wrong.

Globalization did away with the untidy business of
democracy, public ownership, and personal will.  It didn’t
matter whether public utilities were well-run or not, they
had to be privatized to rid them of inefficiencies.

But the promise of globalization was never realized.  It was
supposed to be a metaphor for choice but choice became
secondary to corporate interests.  It was supposed to
promote world democracy but democratic states became a
nuisance. 

Transnational corporations became bigger than many states, 
"freed of the limitations of geography and citizens, free of
local obligations, empowered by the mobility of money and
goods - - better in every way," says Ralston Saul

Ideology, like theater, is dependent on the willing
suspension of disbelief.   No one really believed that an
ideology based on greed, fear, economic Darwinism, and lack
of democracy could succeed.

The illusion of globalization began to dissolve shortly
after the creation of its crowning achievement in 1995- -
the powerful World Trade Organization. 

Under the WTO, the abstract was taken to new levels of
absurdity.  Everything became commercial.  Culture was not
the expression of a people, it was simply entertainment. 
Food was not a necessity but a mere product.   Health care
and education were not the foundations of a civil society,
just services for hire.

But citizens soon realized that nations controlled raw
materials, not transnationals.   Power rested in the hands
of people, not in the rarefied atmosphere of boardrooms. 
Powerful armies were controlled by nations states, despite
the growth of mercenaries.

The power of nation states and the weakness of globalization 
became apparent in the 1990s.  It was nations who intervened
in the massacres in Croatia and Slovena while the masters of
globalization stood helplessly aside.

Giant global businesses began to resemble the directionless
public bureaucracies that they wished to replace.  
Corruption in the giant Enron exceeded that of the worst
banana republic.  Deregulation was disastrous for the
airlines industry.

Nations began to defy the captains of capital.  New Zealand
discarded the global illusion that they embraced for 15
years.  In 1999, they tossed out globalization and brought
in economic regulations.

Malaysia rejected global economics and actually prospered
when other Asian disciples of the master plan were
floundering.  Brazil elected a populist president and gave
him a mandate to confront globalization.

The U.S. rejected globalization with its invasion of Iraq. 
The president of the U.S. made it clear that national
interests superseded corporate interests.

Now the nation state is on the rise and globalization is  no
longer global.  Large parts of Latin America, Africa, and
Asia are no longer part of it.

What will be the new face of the power of the nation state? 
Will it be the democratic force of people as demonstrated by
the Ottawa treaty against landmines, attempts to bring
world’s criminals to justice with the International Court,
undertakings to save the environment through the Kyoto
accord?

Or will the new era of the nation state be characterized by
tribalism, superstition, militarism, and fear?

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