Policy environment: impact of war
By Javed Akbar Ansari
The policy environment can be defined in terms of the dominant policy paradigm and the policy objectives it generates. The dominant policy paradigm during 1991-01 could be described as 'global liberalism'.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was supposed to generate a "peace dividend" and the Clinton administration (1992-2000) was committed to using the resources of the American state and its new found hegemony for integrating markets and policy-making processes through the universalization of liberal norms and procedures.
The September 11, counterattack on America has led to a fundamental transformation in the policy environment. The system hegemon is no longer committed to globalization and multiateralism. America has redefined its security concerns in a manner which requires a subjugation of markets and states to America's national interests. Given America's overwhelming military power and its commitment to use it ruthlessly this has lead to a de-legitimation of liberal principles and policies.
Pakistan has been committed to global liberalism since 1988 when the first IMF structural adjustment agreement was signed by Dr Mahbub-ul-Haq. The fundamental premises of this commitment need to be re-examined as globalization is abandoned, international organizations become instruments of hegemonic politics, liberal trade and investment regimes collapse and pressure mounts to subjugate Pakistan's national interests to that of the system hegemon - America.
Dying globalization:
Reliance on foreign capital, foreign trade and policy regimes imposed upon us by multilateral agencies makes no sense in the present economic environment where globalizations is collapsing.
All major forecasters - Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, the IMF, the OECD, the European Union - have been revising their growth forecasts downwards almost every quarter in 2001, 02 and 03. "The current global slow-down is exceptionally deep and broad" according the World Bank.The world GDP per capita stagnated during 2001 and 02 - recording a rate of growth of just 0.3 per cent, not statistically significantly different from zero.
World trade levels fell by 1 per cent in 01 and the World Bank does not expect trade levels at end 02 to be significantly higher than at end-2001.During 2001 commodity prices fell by 9 per cent and prices of manufactured exports fell by 1.5 per cent. According to the World Bank, manufactured export unit values fell by a further 0.5 per cent while commodity prices (except oil) fell by a further 3 per cent during 2002. Global GDP per capita growth is likely to be insignificant (probably 0.4 per cent according to the World Bank estimates) in 02 and prospects for 03 are equally gloomy.
Countries dependent on commodity exports and on private capital inflows have been particularly hard hit during 2001-03. Net long-term resource flows fell by 25.6 per cent in 2001 and private flows declined by 30.1 per cent. Total capital market commitments declined by 25.9 per cent. Capital market valuation, which had fallen by more than 31 per cent during 2000 fell by a further 5 per cent in 2002. The share of foreign direct investment in gross capital formation has continued to fall in most developing countries during 2001-03.
The World Bank expects total capital flows to developing countries to have fallen by 8 per cent during 2002. FDI flows are also expected to decline and the trade situation of most developing countries - specially exporters of IT-related products and services - has deteriorated during 2002 and 03.
Many leading capitalist economies - Japan, Hong Kong, Italy, Germany - are in recession and the US "recovery" predictions presume the sustainability of further increases in the American current account deficit and in consumer indebtedness. The US current account deficit is expected to exceed 6 per cent of GDP by end 2003 and by then transfers from the rest of the world, exceeding one trillion dollars annually, will be required to finance it. If the appetite for investing in the US assets dries up, then according to the IMF "there will be a marked deceleration of growth in 2003".
Prospects for sustaining capital flows into America are undermined by the continuing decline of the capital markets and America's inability to effectively tackle boardroom corruption and corporate swindles. This cannot be done because Bush and Chenny are themselves heavily implicated in these scandals and have much to hide. That is why Merrill Lynch recently cut the S and P composite target from 1050 to 960. According to Merrill Lynch, 2003 earning per share levels will be around 1999 levels.
Trade growth prospects are also bleak. America has imposed steel tariffs in 02 and introduced a viciously protectionist Farm Bill that massively increases domestic subsidies. Both America and the EU have largely ignored commitments under the Textile and Clothing Agreement and the WTO continues to ignore this inaction.
Trade disputes between America and the EU are increasing and in September 2002 the WTO authorized EU retaliation (worth $4 billion) against America. The WTO negotiations on agricultural trade reforms have collapsed in March 2003. Many economists believe that the global growth slowdown will last for a decade with average world GDP per capita growth not exceeding l per cent per annum until 2010. Relying on world capital markets for stimulating development financing in Pakistan in these circumstances is sheer folly.
Democratic imperialism:
The global economic downturn is accompanied by increased American state terrorism. There is an organic and unbreakable link between liberalism and imperialism. The presently dominant universal human rights regime was born in America in the late 18th century.
America had been the theatre of the mass slaughter of Red Indians - ten million of whom perished during three centuries. In a fundamental sense it was this slaughter and the theft and plunder of an entire continent which made the construction of a constitutional liberal regime possible.
Human rights are thus in a very important sense prior to democracy. Duties associated with them must be imposed upon a state before it can be allowed to practise democracy. This is because human rights construct autonomous (avarice and jealousy obsessed) individuality on the one hand and protect the capitalist minority from the "tyranny of the majority" on the other. That is why the UN Charter of Human Rights is modelled on the American Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.
The Charter, the Bill and the Declaration all proclaim the equal autonomy of the individual. This commits democratic regimes to an acceptance of the doctrine of self-creation which is the fountainhead of liberal capitalist order. A religious or non-capitalist state cannot be considered legitimate in the perspective of human rights ideology for such a state necessarily denies man's capability of self and world creation.
The only legitimate regime according to human rights ideology is a constitutional republic. Such a republic proclaims man's sovereignty in principle and the sovereignty of capital in practice.
This is because a constitutional regime accords value only to freedom i.e. the accumulation of means for the satisfaction of any equally trivial ends. It necessarily rejects morality by regarding all private valuations as equally worthless. Treating the individual with "concern and respect" amounts to equalization/trivialization of all moral choices and therefore necessarily, valuing outcomes/choices solely in terms of their contribution towards accumulation of resources for the satisfaction of equally trivial and valueless ends.
It is therefore not surprising that constitutional republics are necessarily dominated by capitalist oligarchs whose personal choices (leading a life of avarice and covetousness) coincide with the preferences of the socially valued way of life.
In practice it is capitalist norms and values that are imposed upon all citizens - indeed one is a citizen only to the extent one considers legitimate the social prioritization of accumulation. Human rights ideology and it's practice makes it impossible that an alternative social prioritization be articulated.
Repression is thus necessarily part of the agenda of the universal human rights regimes. Such repression is usually justified in the name of "the people" - this was first done by the authors of the American constitution. The mass slaughter of the Red Indians, the fire bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, the atomic attacks on Hiroshima, the napalming of Vietnam, the use of daisy cutter bombs in Afghanistan, the continuing American state terrorism leading to the death of millions of Iraqi children - all these are the legitimate acts of a liberal democratic regime which justifies them on the basis of human rights ideology, in the name of "we, the people".
Michael Mann has argued that there is a necessary relationship between liberal democracy and genocide. Liberal democracies have committed ideologically legitimated genocide in Vietnam, Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq. The greater the commitment to homogenizing behaviour through the acceptance of human rights as a universal norm and the consequent (equal) trivialization of personal ends, the greater the temptation to murder those who refuse to accept these norms. This "other" has to be coerced or induced to assimilate i.e. to submit to the sovereignty of capital.
Submission to capital/human rights is a necessary condition for survival in universal liberal order. Human rights ideology does not advocate peaceful coexistence. Races such as the Red Indian and states such as Afghanistan, which do not submit to the sovereignty of capital human rights have to be exterminated.
The edifice of liberal America was built on the corpses of the Red Indians and the preservation of global order requires the mass slaughter of the Afghans. Mann is conscious of liberalism's compulsive commitment to exterminate "outsiders" when he discusses the behaviour of settler communities in eighteenth century North America - "the greater the democracy among the perpetuators, the greater the genocide.
The democratic rule of "we the people" thus necessarily requires the elimination of the other (the Muslim). That is why "ethnic cleansing, murder, deporting, genocide was central to the liberal modernity of the New World" writes Michael Mann.
The ethnic cleansing of the whole of Asia and Africa has never been a viable project - Cecil Rhodes and Lord Macualay came to this conclusion centuries ago. It becomes increasingly unviable as the share of the European races in world population continues to fall- from 22 in 1901 to about 14 per cent today and expected to drop to a little over 7 per cent by 2101 by the UN - and as the European races age.
Repression must therefore take the form of destroying state authority in Asia and Africa. The nature of the post modern world order was captured in one of Nicos Poulantzis' seminal studies over three decades ago. He saw multinational capital as an agent of social transformation subordinating both host country markets and the host country states to America.
This according to Poulantzis leads to the creation of a "new type of non-territorial imperialism, implanted and maintained ... through the induced reproduction of the form of the dominant imperialist power within each national formation and its state".
It requires "the extended reproduction within (each dominated national formation) of the ideological and political conditions for the development of American imperialism". The American ideology (the ideology of human rights), markets and governance process must achieve hegemony in the sense that they alone are recognized as legitimately ordained "imperatives of reason" (Kant's "categorical imperatives", Habermas' "necessary presuppositions"). State elites, in every country, have to be taught to Americanize local markets and governance processes and to subordinate them to America.
Susan Strange has written "what is emerging, therefore, is a non-territorial empire with its imperial capital in Washington. Where imperial capitals used to draw courtiers from outlying provinces, Washington draws lobbyists from outlying enterprises, outlying minority groups, and globally organized pressure groups. As in Rome, citizenship is not limited to a master race and the empire contains a mix of citizens with full legal and political rights, semi-citizens and non-citizens like Rome's slave population.
Many of the semi-citizens walk the streets of Rio or of Bonn, of London or of Madrid, shoulder to shoulder with the non-citizens; no one can necessarily tell them apart by colour or race or even dress. The semi-citizens of the empire are many and widespread. They include many people employed by the large trans-national corporations operating in the transnational production structure and serving a global market.
They include the people employed in transnational banks. They often include members of the armed forces, those that are trained, armed by, and dependent on the armed forces of the United States. They include many academics in medicine, natural sciences, and social studies like management and economics who look to US professional associations and to US universities as the peer group in whose eyes they wish to shine and to excel. They include people in the press and media for whom US technology and US examples have shown the way.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, notes that "the three great imperatives of (US) geopolitical strategy are to prevent collusion and maintain dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and to keep the barbarians from coming together". These objectives are to be achieved by Americanizing societies and governance processes of both "vassal" and "barbarian" states.
Pakistan's choices:
In post global order we face a stark choice. We can accept to become an American colony. This must involve the abandonment of our commitment to Islam as a state ideology, the abandonment of our nuclear programme and an acceptance of Indian regional hegemony by betraying the Kashmir Jihad. Accepting American and Indian imperialist dominance will reduce the possibility of invasion but it will not ensure accelerated development.
The typical natural resource scarce American colony - Honduras, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Ghana, Liberia, Zaire, Malawi, Afghanistan - remains poor and politically unstable, and there is no reason to believe that Pakistan will escape this fate. Moreover in a world gripped by recession foreign capital and foreign markets are not likely to be enthusiastic about Pakistan.
The other viable alternative is to stand up to American imperialism and Indian regional hegemony. This requires the demonstration of serious commitment to our national Islamic identity, our nuclear programme and to the Jihad in Kashmir. It also requires a complete overhaul of our macroeconomic strategy. The principle concern should be to build a national war economy capable of mobilizing the masses in effective defence of our national sovereignty.
Building a national war economy can significantly stimulate growth as is shown by the experience of the USSR in the 1930s, America in the 1940s, China in the 1950s, South Korea in the 1970s, and 1980s and Iran today. This will of course involve a repudiation of the strategy imposed upon us by the IMF, the World Bank and other American-dominated multilateral agencies. The new economic strategy will be domestic market oriented and the state will seek to strictly regulate and control all international transactions.
The policy environment can be defined in terms of the dominant policy paradigm and the policy objectives it generates. The dominant policy paradigm during 1991-01 could be described as 'global liberalism'.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was supposed to generate a "peace dividend" and the Clinton administration (1992-2000) was committed to using the resources of the American state and its new found hegemony for integrating markets and policy-making processes through the universalization of liberal norms and procedures.
The September 11, counterattack on America has led to a fundamental transformation in the policy environment. The system hegemon is no longer committed to globalization and multiateralism. America has redefined its security concerns in a manner which requires a subjugation of markets and states to America's national interests. Given America's overwhelming military power and its commitment to use it ruthlessly this has lead to a de-legitimation of liberal principles and policies.
Pakistan has been committed to global liberalism since 1988 when the first IMF structural adjustment agreement was signed by Dr Mahbub-ul-Haq. The fundamental premises of this commitment need to be re-examined as globalization is abandoned, international organizations become instruments of hegemonic politics, liberal trade and investment regimes collapse and pressure mounts to subjugate Pakistan's national interests to that of the system hegemon - America.
Dying globalization:
Reliance on foreign capital, foreign trade and policy regimes imposed upon us by multilateral agencies makes no sense in the present economic environment where globalizations is collapsing.
All major forecasters - Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, the IMF, the OECD, the European Union - have been revising their growth forecasts downwards almost every quarter in 2001, 02 and 03. "The current global slow-down is exceptionally deep and broad" according the World Bank.The world GDP per capita stagnated during 2001 and 02 - recording a rate of growth of just 0.3 per cent, not statistically significantly different from zero.
World trade levels fell by 1 per cent in 01 and the World Bank does not expect trade levels at end 02 to be significantly higher than at end-2001.During 2001 commodity prices fell by 9 per cent and prices of manufactured exports fell by 1.5 per cent. According to the World Bank, manufactured export unit values fell by a further 0.5 per cent while commodity prices (except oil) fell by a further 3 per cent during 2002. Global GDP per capita growth is likely to be insignificant (probably 0.4 per cent according to the World Bank estimates) in 02 and prospects for 03 are equally gloomy.
Countries dependent on commodity exports and on private capital inflows have been particularly hard hit during 2001-03. Net long-term resource flows fell by 25.6 per cent in 2001 and private flows declined by 30.1 per cent. Total capital market commitments declined by 25.9 per cent. Capital market valuation, which had fallen by more than 31 per cent during 2000 fell by a further 5 per cent in 2002. The share of foreign direct investment in gross capital formation has continued to fall in most developing countries during 2001-03.
The World Bank expects total capital flows to developing countries to have fallen by 8 per cent during 2002. FDI flows are also expected to decline and the trade situation of most developing countries - specially exporters of IT-related products and services - has deteriorated during 2002 and 03.
Many leading capitalist economies - Japan, Hong Kong, Italy, Germany - are in recession and the US "recovery" predictions presume the sustainability of further increases in the American current account deficit and in consumer indebtedness. The US current account deficit is expected to exceed 6 per cent of GDP by end 2003 and by then transfers from the rest of the world, exceeding one trillion dollars annually, will be required to finance it. If the appetite for investing in the US assets dries up, then according to the IMF "there will be a marked deceleration of growth in 2003".
Prospects for sustaining capital flows into America are undermined by the continuing decline of the capital markets and America's inability to effectively tackle boardroom corruption and corporate swindles. This cannot be done because Bush and Chenny are themselves heavily implicated in these scandals and have much to hide. That is why Merrill Lynch recently cut the S and P composite target from 1050 to 960. According to Merrill Lynch, 2003 earning per share levels will be around 1999 levels.
Trade growth prospects are also bleak. America has imposed steel tariffs in 02 and introduced a viciously protectionist Farm Bill that massively increases domestic subsidies. Both America and the EU have largely ignored commitments under the Textile and Clothing Agreement and the WTO continues to ignore this inaction.
Trade disputes between America and the EU are increasing and in September 2002 the WTO authorized EU retaliation (worth $4 billion) against America. The WTO negotiations on agricultural trade reforms have collapsed in March 2003. Many economists believe that the global growth slowdown will last for a decade with average world GDP per capita growth not exceeding l per cent per annum until 2010. Relying on world capital markets for stimulating development financing in Pakistan in these circumstances is sheer folly.
Democratic imperialism:
The global economic downturn is accompanied by increased American state terrorism. There is an organic and unbreakable link between liberalism and imperialism. The presently dominant universal human rights regime was born in America in the late 18th century.
America had been the theatre of the mass slaughter of Red Indians - ten million of whom perished during three centuries. In a fundamental sense it was this slaughter and the theft and plunder of an entire continent which made the construction of a constitutional liberal regime possible.
Human rights are thus in a very important sense prior to democracy. Duties associated with them must be imposed upon a state before it can be allowed to practise democracy. This is because human rights construct autonomous (avarice and jealousy obsessed) individuality on the one hand and protect the capitalist minority from the "tyranny of the majority" on the other. That is why the UN Charter of Human Rights is modelled on the American Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.
The Charter, the Bill and the Declaration all proclaim the equal autonomy of the individual. This commits democratic regimes to an acceptance of the doctrine of self-creation which is the fountainhead of liberal capitalist order. A religious or non-capitalist state cannot be considered legitimate in the perspective of human rights ideology for such a state necessarily denies man's capability of self and world creation.
The only legitimate regime according to human rights ideology is a constitutional republic. Such a republic proclaims man's sovereignty in principle and the sovereignty of capital in practice.
This is because a constitutional regime accords value only to freedom i.e. the accumulation of means for the satisfaction of any equally trivial ends. It necessarily rejects morality by regarding all private valuations as equally worthless. Treating the individual with "concern and respect" amounts to equalization/trivialization of all moral choices and therefore necessarily, valuing outcomes/choices solely in terms of their contribution towards accumulation of resources for the satisfaction of equally trivial and valueless ends.
It is therefore not surprising that constitutional republics are necessarily dominated by capitalist oligarchs whose personal choices (leading a life of avarice and covetousness) coincide with the preferences of the socially valued way of life.
In practice it is capitalist norms and values that are imposed upon all citizens - indeed one is a citizen only to the extent one considers legitimate the social prioritization of accumulation. Human rights ideology and it's practice makes it impossible that an alternative social prioritization be articulated.
Repression is thus necessarily part of the agenda of the universal human rights regimes. Such repression is usually justified in the name of "the people" - this was first done by the authors of the American constitution. The mass slaughter of the Red Indians, the fire bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, the atomic attacks on Hiroshima, the napalming of Vietnam, the use of daisy cutter bombs in Afghanistan, the continuing American state terrorism leading to the death of millions of Iraqi children - all these are the legitimate acts of a liberal democratic regime which justifies them on the basis of human rights ideology, in the name of "we, the people".
Michael Mann has argued that there is a necessary relationship between liberal democracy and genocide. Liberal democracies have committed ideologically legitimated genocide in Vietnam, Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq. The greater the commitment to homogenizing behaviour through the acceptance of human rights as a universal norm and the consequent (equal) trivialization of personal ends, the greater the temptation to murder those who refuse to accept these norms. This "other" has to be coerced or induced to assimilate i.e. to submit to the sovereignty of capital.
Submission to capital/human rights is a necessary condition for survival in universal liberal order. Human rights ideology does not advocate peaceful coexistence. Races such as the Red Indian and states such as Afghanistan, which do not submit to the sovereignty of capital human rights have to be exterminated.
The edifice of liberal America was built on the corpses of the Red Indians and the preservation of global order requires the mass slaughter of the Afghans. Mann is conscious of liberalism's compulsive commitment to exterminate "outsiders" when he discusses the behaviour of settler communities in eighteenth century North America - "the greater the democracy among the perpetuators, the greater the genocide.
The democratic rule of "we the people" thus necessarily requires the elimination of the other (the Muslim). That is why "ethnic cleansing, murder, deporting, genocide was central to the liberal modernity of the New World" writes Michael Mann.
The ethnic cleansing of the whole of Asia and Africa has never been a viable project - Cecil Rhodes and Lord Macualay came to this conclusion centuries ago. It becomes increasingly unviable as the share of the European races in world population continues to fall- from 22 in 1901 to about 14 per cent today and expected to drop to a little over 7 per cent by 2101 by the UN - and as the European races age.
Repression must therefore take the form of destroying state authority in Asia and Africa. The nature of the post modern world order was captured in one of Nicos Poulantzis' seminal studies over three decades ago. He saw multinational capital as an agent of social transformation subordinating both host country markets and the host country states to America.
This according to Poulantzis leads to the creation of a "new type of non-territorial imperialism, implanted and maintained ... through the induced reproduction of the form of the dominant imperialist power within each national formation and its state".
It requires "the extended reproduction within (each dominated national formation) of the ideological and political conditions for the development of American imperialism". The American ideology (the ideology of human rights), markets and governance process must achieve hegemony in the sense that they alone are recognized as legitimately ordained "imperatives of reason" (Kant's "categorical imperatives", Habermas' "necessary presuppositions"). State elites, in every country, have to be taught to Americanize local markets and governance processes and to subordinate them to America.
Susan Strange has written "what is emerging, therefore, is a non-territorial empire with its imperial capital in Washington. Where imperial capitals used to draw courtiers from outlying provinces, Washington draws lobbyists from outlying enterprises, outlying minority groups, and globally organized pressure groups. As in Rome, citizenship is not limited to a master race and the empire contains a mix of citizens with full legal and political rights, semi-citizens and non-citizens like Rome's slave population.
Many of the semi-citizens walk the streets of Rio or of Bonn, of London or of Madrid, shoulder to shoulder with the non-citizens; no one can necessarily tell them apart by colour or race or even dress. The semi-citizens of the empire are many and widespread. They include many people employed by the large trans-national corporations operating in the transnational production structure and serving a global market.
They include the people employed in transnational banks. They often include members of the armed forces, those that are trained, armed by, and dependent on the armed forces of the United States. They include many academics in medicine, natural sciences, and social studies like management and economics who look to US professional associations and to US universities as the peer group in whose eyes they wish to shine and to excel. They include people in the press and media for whom US technology and US examples have shown the way.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, notes that "the three great imperatives of (US) geopolitical strategy are to prevent collusion and maintain dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and to keep the barbarians from coming together". These objectives are to be achieved by Americanizing societies and governance processes of both "vassal" and "barbarian" states.
Pakistan's choices:
In post global order we face a stark choice. We can accept to become an American colony. This must involve the abandonment of our commitment to Islam as a state ideology, the abandonment of our nuclear programme and an acceptance of Indian regional hegemony by betraying the Kashmir Jihad. Accepting American and Indian imperialist dominance will reduce the possibility of invasion but it will not ensure accelerated development.
The typical natural resource scarce American colony - Honduras, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Ghana, Liberia, Zaire, Malawi, Afghanistan - remains poor and politically unstable, and there is no reason to believe that Pakistan will escape this fate. Moreover in a world gripped by recession foreign capital and foreign markets are not likely to be enthusiastic about Pakistan.
The other viable alternative is to stand up to American imperialism and Indian regional hegemony. This requires the demonstration of serious commitment to our national Islamic identity, our nuclear programme and to the Jihad in Kashmir. It also requires a complete overhaul of our macroeconomic strategy. The principle concern should be to build a national war economy capable of mobilizing the masses in effective defence of our national sovereignty.
Building a national war economy can significantly stimulate growth as is shown by the experience of the USSR in the 1930s, America in the 1940s, China in the 1950s, South Korea in the 1970s, and 1980s and Iran today. This will of course involve a repudiation of the strategy imposed upon us by the IMF, the World Bank and other American-dominated multilateral agencies. The new economic strategy will be domestic market oriented and the state will seek to strictly regulate and control all international transactions.
posted by Alghazalians at 9:46 AM
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