Global Inequality - it's no accident
. | 20.04.2002 12:46
The centrespread of the January/February issue of New Internationalist is startling - it compares the demands of French revolutionaries in 1789 with the demands of global protestors in 2002 on various issues, and its conclusion was clear: little had changed. Global poverty and oppression are more marked today than they were over two hundred years ago. A closer look at global trade relations today sheds some light on possible large-scale reasons for this.
And perhaps we'd like to think that it is just the way things are that the poor in both the developing and underdeveloped worlds are poor because they lack the initiative to improve their condition or because they inherently lack the capability to succeed. They are therefore, by and large, responsible for their own fate. Yet two little-known points might highlight why the prevailing perception of global inequity can be misleading.
We're getting the prestige, the hegemony, and the power, oh, and don't worry, they'll foot the bill.
One, global inequity is intentional. George Kennan, former head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff, and key formulator of US Cold War policy, wrote in Document PPS23, 24th February 1948: "We have about 50 per cent of the world's wealth but only 6.3 per cent of its population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. We should cease to talk about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
Chuck Quilty, peace activist and cofounder of Voices In the Wilderness: A Campaign to End the US/UN Sanctions Against the People of Iraq, noted that the above statement still represents basic US policy, which belies the statements of George W. Bush and other government officials following the tragic events of September 11th. He posits: "I suggest that now is the time for some serious reflection for all of us. Do we want to simply continue the type of policy advocated by George Kennan in 1948 and accept the violence that will inevitably continue as the fruit of that policy, or do we want to return to a more humane policy that recognizes human rights and the common good as more important than power and the aggrandizement of the elite at the expense of the masses?"
Global economic policy under the guise of free trade and through mechanisms such as those Bretton Woods agencies and WTO essentially impoverish much of the world to protect developed world corporations, extend their reach, and maintain a disparate trade balance. A level playing field, one may argue, but without equality of opportunity, the odds are heavily stacked against a developing world economy attaining anything near First World status, and the gap since 1945 has widened many times over, the inequality exacerbated.
Two, the role of colonialism has been understated for far too long. It may not be fashionable to sensible to suggest that a historical phenomenon many years over still has reverberations on the present day state of affairs on Africa, but it has had a large effect, as surely as the legacy of slavery in the American South is still seen in the growing black underclass in American cities today.
Yet as Madeleine Bunting recently wrote in the Guardian, guilt, however uncomfortable a sentiment, is at the heart of Britain's relationship to Africa. The issues at the heart of Africa's present-day predicament are a result of colonialism. Africa's economy is still shaped by the preoccupations of colonialism: the extraction of natural resources and the development of cash crops. Railways, roads, ports are all sited to speed this transfer of goods from Africa to Europe rather than to develop internal markets. The use of superior military technology further obliterated the indigenous structures of power and authority, resulting in a power vacuum that was deliberately maintained, which meant weak democracies, a concentration of power in the hands of those with the most access to weapons that the west continued to supply. The history of conflict, military coups and corrupt dictatorships was inevitable.
The formulaic mantra of aid, trade and debt relief does not seem set to redress this gross imbalance and inequity. Africa needs huge investment in basic infrastructure such as roads and bridges, but between 1996 and 2000, aid fell from US$16billion to US$12.7billion. Trade barriers cost Africa at least US$2billion a year in lost revenues, and only three countries have actually received some measure of debt relief, another 20-odd are in the queue, but Africa is still trapped in paying billions in interest payments. It does not alleviate the problem when at Doha recently, the EU pushed for the abolition of all tariffs and trade barriers for the least developed countries, but lobbying from large companies with only the profit motive in mind crucially modified this legislation, ending with key African exports such as sugar and beef being excluded.
The root cause of the problem, then, is that when former colonial powers pillaged virtually an entire continent, aiding the growth of major trading corporations, they never really made reparations for it, instead levying high interest rates on debt, making repayment much less development virtually impossible. The outlook for global equity is bleak indeed. Is there a solution to the seemingly intractable crisis then? Can we improve on conditions akin to those in 1789? Some 60 per cent of Indonesians - 120 million people - now live below the poverty line. Many more are in the same situation elsewhere.
Are solutions possible? I'd like to think there are. Remove the intention of preserving income inequality from developing world government policy, and write off developing world debt. Abolishing the arms trade would surely help, too. But the power of corporations has grown to an extent that a fairer, more equitable world looks set to be just a pipe-dream.
18 February 2002
And perhaps we'd like to think that it is just the way things are that the poor in both the developing and underdeveloped worlds are poor because they lack the initiative to improve their condition or because they inherently lack the capability to succeed. They are therefore, by and large, responsible for their own fate. Yet two little-known points might highlight why the prevailing perception of global inequity can be misleading.
We're getting the prestige, the hegemony, and the power, oh, and don't worry, they'll foot the bill.
One, global inequity is intentional. George Kennan, former head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff, and key formulator of US Cold War policy, wrote in Document PPS23, 24th February 1948: "We have about 50 per cent of the world's wealth but only 6.3 per cent of its population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. We should cease to talk about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
Chuck Quilty, peace activist and cofounder of Voices In the Wilderness: A Campaign to End the US/UN Sanctions Against the People of Iraq, noted that the above statement still represents basic US policy, which belies the statements of George W. Bush and other government officials following the tragic events of September 11th. He posits: "I suggest that now is the time for some serious reflection for all of us. Do we want to simply continue the type of policy advocated by George Kennan in 1948 and accept the violence that will inevitably continue as the fruit of that policy, or do we want to return to a more humane policy that recognizes human rights and the common good as more important than power and the aggrandizement of the elite at the expense of the masses?"
Global economic policy under the guise of free trade and through mechanisms such as those Bretton Woods agencies and WTO essentially impoverish much of the world to protect developed world corporations, extend their reach, and maintain a disparate trade balance. A level playing field, one may argue, but without equality of opportunity, the odds are heavily stacked against a developing world economy attaining anything near First World status, and the gap since 1945 has widened many times over, the inequality exacerbated.
Two, the role of colonialism has been understated for far too long. It may not be fashionable to sensible to suggest that a historical phenomenon many years over still has reverberations on the present day state of affairs on Africa, but it has had a large effect, as surely as the legacy of slavery in the American South is still seen in the growing black underclass in American cities today.
Yet as Madeleine Bunting recently wrote in the Guardian, guilt, however uncomfortable a sentiment, is at the heart of Britain's relationship to Africa. The issues at the heart of Africa's present-day predicament are a result of colonialism. Africa's economy is still shaped by the preoccupations of colonialism: the extraction of natural resources and the development of cash crops. Railways, roads, ports are all sited to speed this transfer of goods from Africa to Europe rather than to develop internal markets. The use of superior military technology further obliterated the indigenous structures of power and authority, resulting in a power vacuum that was deliberately maintained, which meant weak democracies, a concentration of power in the hands of those with the most access to weapons that the west continued to supply. The history of conflict, military coups and corrupt dictatorships was inevitable.
The formulaic mantra of aid, trade and debt relief does not seem set to redress this gross imbalance and inequity. Africa needs huge investment in basic infrastructure such as roads and bridges, but between 1996 and 2000, aid fell from US$16billion to US$12.7billion. Trade barriers cost Africa at least US$2billion a year in lost revenues, and only three countries have actually received some measure of debt relief, another 20-odd are in the queue, but Africa is still trapped in paying billions in interest payments. It does not alleviate the problem when at Doha recently, the EU pushed for the abolition of all tariffs and trade barriers for the least developed countries, but lobbying from large companies with only the profit motive in mind crucially modified this legislation, ending with key African exports such as sugar and beef being excluded.
The root cause of the problem, then, is that when former colonial powers pillaged virtually an entire continent, aiding the growth of major trading corporations, they never really made reparations for it, instead levying high interest rates on debt, making repayment much less development virtually impossible. The outlook for global equity is bleak indeed. Is there a solution to the seemingly intractable crisis then? Can we improve on conditions akin to those in 1789? Some 60 per cent of Indonesians - 120 million people - now live below the poverty line. Many more are in the same situation elsewhere.
Are solutions possible? I'd like to think there are. Remove the intention of preserving income inequality from developing world government policy, and write off developing world debt. Abolishing the arms trade would surely help, too. But the power of corporations has grown to an extent that a fairer, more equitable world looks set to be just a pipe-dream.
18 February 2002
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