In this first decade of the twenty-first century, and probably for several decades to come, the world is beset by three quite different geopolitical cleavages, which interact with each other but have separate dynamics. Most analysts of the contemporary world situation err precisely by failing to discern the distinctiveness of the three cleavages, sometimes seeming to argue that only one of these cleavages exists or at least that only one really matters. These three cleavages are: (1) the struggle among the so-called Triad—the United States, the European Union, and Japan—in their search to be the primary locus of capital accumulation in the coming decades; (2) the struggle between North and South, or between core zones and other zones of the world-economy, given the continuing polarization—economic, social, and demographic—of the world-system; (3) the struggle between the spirit of Davos and the spirit of Porto Alegre about the kind of world-system we collectively intend to build.
The first two conflicts are locatable geographically, and involve interstate relations per se, although not exclusively. The third conflict is not an interstate conflict, but between two groups/movements/strata, each located across the world. In order to evaluate the question “What future for the world?” one has to take each of the three conflicts and spell out its processes and likely developments over the next twenty-five to fifty years, and then see how they interact with other.
The Triadic Cleavage
The concept of the Triad first became popular in the 1970s. It had its first institutional expression in the Trilateral Commission. The commission itself came into existence as a consequence of two economic realities: the improved economic performance of western Europe and Japan, allowing them to “catch up” to the United States during the 1960s; and the economic difficulties in the world-economy of the 1970s, signaled by but not caused by the radical rise in oil prices as a result of OPEC decisions. The first new economic reality meant that western Europe and Japan could no longer be treated so cavalierly by the United States, since they were no longer in any significant sense dependent economically on decisions of the U.S. government. The second economic reality meant that there was a reduction in profit rates worldwide, and that there was therefore now acute competition among the three members of the Triad, each seeking to minimize its losses (inevitably at the expense of the others).
The Trilateral Commission was a political attempt to reduce the emerging tensions between the three partners of the Triad. It was at best partially successful.4 The period 1940/45 to 1967/73, which has been described as the “trente glorieuses,” was a Kondratieff A-period. It was a period of overall expansion of the world-economy, indeed the most remarkable such expansion in the history of the capitalist world-economy, and exemplified the motto “A rising tide raises all ships.” But the thirty years since then have been a Kondratieff B-period, one in which profits from productive activities have been lower than in the preceding A-period, leading to relocation of industries, a shift to speculative activities as a source of profit, increased unemployment worldwide, and a sharp acceleration of economic polarization both globally and within states.
In this B-period, the three major loci of accumulation expressed their competition with each other by an effort to “export unemployment” to each other in order to maximize the maintenance and increase of national wealth. It was a situation in which all three could not do well simultaneously. A crude summary of the situation is that Europe did best relatively in the 1970s, Japan in the 1980s, and the United States in the 1990s. None of them saw a significant drop in their standard of living (something that did happen in other parts of the worldeconomy), but the differences between the members of the Triad were quite important in each decade. The media seemed to think that in the 1970s the oil states plus Germany were unbeatable. In the 1980s Japan was acclaimed as world champion, to be replaced in the 1990s by the United States. This was essentially media hype, even though any policy-makers believed the hype and adjusted their policies in the light of this hype.
The fact is that all three loci have been for some time approximately equal in fundamental strength. They all have the technical competence (so-called human capital) and the financial underpinnings (essentially accumulated wealth) to engage in productive activity in those arenas which at the moment are the most likely to produce high levels of profits. They also all have commercial networks across the world to ensure their ability to purchase and to sell on the world market. They are all seeking to secure advantages by promoting appropriate research and development activities, and each has the scientific community with which to do this successfully. I don’t mean to suggest that their resources are absolutely identical, but I do mean to suggest that any differences that are to be found are neither determinative nor impervious to being overcome in relatively short order by the countries of the Triad that are momentarily behind.
On the assumption that this long Kondratieff B-period will come to an end (even if there may still occur a further dramatic drop in the economic arena), what will then determine which of these three arenas will come out ahead in the struggle to be the dominant locus of accumulation in the next thirty years? I do not think that we will find the answer in that elusive category, productivity, so favored by the pundits. Advantage in productivity (even if it is measured accurately, which is very difficult) is too often a passing phenomenon. Nor do I think the answer is to be found in entrepreneurial culture, since I believe that, for capitalists, the drive to accumulate has marvelous ways of overcoming cultural obstacles. And, finally, I do not believe it has much to do with the strength of trade unions. For one thing, I think the differences between the three loci in this regard are exaggerated. And for a second thing, I do not think that trade-union strength primarily accounts for differences in the cost of personnel in productive activities.
What then are the differences that count in the Triadic competition? It seems to me that there are two crucial ones: first, the priorities of the states concerning research and development, and therefore investments in innovations; and second, the ability of the upper strata (broadly defined) to command access to consumable wealth. In these two arenas, there are indeed striking differences between the United States on the one hand and the European Union and Japan on the other hand. These differences are not to be measured by annual variations on the many economic indices that are produced for us. They constitute underlying, medium-term, politico-cultural realities that constrain what goes on in the sphere of production and finance.
The United States thinks of itself as the sole superpower of the world-system in the twenty-first century. This self-image is based primarily on its overwhelming military strength, which far exceeds that of any other country or even of many other countries combined. That this self-image masks what I believe is the constantly declining real political power of the United States in
the world-system is not the issue here. What the United States—and especially what the elites who decide policy in the United States—believe about the United States explains, indeed determines, the priorities assigned by its government in the economic arena. And, of course, despite the official line to the contrary, governments have a good deal to say about what is emphasized in terms of economic development, directly by their power as consumers and indirectly by their taxation and regulation policies.
A superpower whose only important claim to superiority in the world arena is military must (and will) emphasize continuing investment in military hardware. From the point of view of long-term economic development, military hardware is a side path. To be sure, there are always spillover possibilities of applying what one has learned or invented in this arena to other arenas. But however real the side benefits, they are less than the benefits of using the same money to create more long-term productive enterprises.
One of the ways in which the United States seeks to maintain its military superiority is to discourage all others from engaging
in similar activities, especially in terms of cutting-edge technology. This applies not least of all to western Europe and Japan. To be sure, neither western Europe nor Japan shows much interest in competing seriously with the United States in this arena. Or, rather, they are willing to devote a much smaller percentage of their national budgets to the military arena, now and in the decades to come. The combination of U.S. pressure and the inclinations of western Europe and Japan mean that in fact the latter are not competitive militarily with the United States, nor are they about to become so. But the other side of that medallion is that they do intend to compete vigorously in all kinds of strictly economic innovations. The fact that nonmilitary development is given a far higher priority by western Europe and Japan is likely to pay off handsomely over the next twenty to thirty years.
This advantage of western Europe and Japan over the United States is compounded by the issue of costs of production. Usually, what is compared when we talk of the cost of labor is how much is paid to ordinary workers (whether skilled or unskilled), adding that which is paid directly in wages to that which is paid indirectly via so-called social wages. If one adds to this amount what is paid via government redistribution (in education, health care, and lifetime income guarantees), the differences between the members of the Triad are not very great, as anyone who travels to these countries and observes the real standard of living of these workers can see quite clearly.
But there is a second group who receive payments for their services—the upper strata and the cadres, both those who work directly for various productive enterprises and those who operate in the nonprofit sector or are so-called free professionals. Whatever name we give to the sums of money these persons receive, from the point of view of investors in an enterprise, they represent wages paid out of the returns from sales and thereby reduce the level of profits. Here the differences are enormous, and are largely explicable by the cultural difference between an erstwhile hegemonic power and contenders for future hegemonic power. In the United States, the real pay of CEOs, the real pay of the cadres, and the real income of those in the nonprofit sector or who are free professionals is simply much, much higher than what is realized in western Europe or Japan. This is not only because individually the returns are igher but also because the percentage of such persons in the overall workforce is much larger.
The recent well-publicized scandals in U.S. corporate enterprises are but the tip of a very large iceberg, whose effects over time cannot but be felt in a more serious decline in the profit rates of U.S.-based enterprises than in that of their long-term competitors. The only way that the United States can reduce this gap is by reducing the outflow to the top 10 to 20 percent of the population or increase the outflow in western Europe and Japan. It seems politically virtually impossible in the short run to reduce seriously the outflow within the United States. A government that moved in this direction would promptly lose the support of essential supporters.
So, the real alternative for the United States is to try to increase outflow in western Europe and Japan. When the United States government preaches to Japan or to Germany about the need to “reform” their outmoded governmental policies, what is being urged is that these countries emulate the United States in the distribution of wages to the upper strata, and thus eliminate their long-term advantage in this respect. This, more than mysterious cultural variables, best explains why these countries have been so resistant to this advice. Unlike countries in the South (even relatively strong countries like Brazil), western Europe and Japan cannot be coerced by IMF action to “reform” their economic structures. For one thing, even when their governments raise the debt level to deal with recessionary problems, their debts are largely internal and thus not exposed to international pressure—as, for example, that of Argentina.7 The governments of western Europe and Japan, unlike that of the United States, reduce the pain of unemployment by more generous welfare payments and by allowing deflation to pursue its course.
We do not have today an integrated world-economy. We have essentially a Triadic world-economy, with three main zones. And this Triadic division will probably grow stronger in the coming decades.What we have therefore is a geopolitical Triadic cleavage in which the United States is likely to do least well over the next twenty to thirty years. American military clout will be less and less useful in reversing this underlying economic shift. In such a situation, the real competition will be between western Europe and Japan, and each will seek to have the United States on its side. I continue to believe that a U.S.-Japan economic alliance is more probable than a U.S.-Europe alliance. But in either case, the U.S. is not likely to be the leading partner, hard as it may be for Americans (and perhaps others) to envisage such a scenario today.
The North-South Cleavage
How the Triadic conflict unfolds will depend very much on what form the other two geopolitical cleavages take. In the North-South conflict, the three members of the Triad constitute the North. They therefore share geopolitical interests in this conflict, but of course they have followed somewhat different policies with regard to them, and have different “special” relationships with various parts of the South. In North-South conflicts, at the present time the United States takes the lead as protagonist of the North, by virtue both of its military strength and of its high degree of influence in the IMF and the World Bank.
As the North is not always a unified bloc, so neither is the South. The South is politically divided in two ways. There are regimes in power in the South that are essentially client regimes of the North, virtually paid agents of the North, and others that are not. But regardless of the particular regimes, there are also objective differences between relatively strong semiperipheral zones and what is sometimes referred to as the Fourth World (that is, the weakest, poorest, smallest states). Indeed, in the South there are some very large states that have actual or potential real geopolitical power—Russia, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Korea, and the list could continue.
Nonetheless, the North-South cleavage is real and is part of the fundamental structure of the capitalist world-economy. Economically, there is a continuing polarization, which although it occasionally slows down, on the whole expands geometrically. The North maintains this structure by its monopolization of advanced productive processes, its control of world financial institutions, its dominance of world scholarship and world media, and, most important, by its military strength. If the conflicts among the Triad usually seem restrained, that is only because of the strengths of each vis-à-vis the others. North-South conflicts are seldom similarly restrained. The North uses an iron fist, if once in a while enclosed in a velvet glove.
How does the South deal with this reality—an increasing socio-economic gap combined with the iron fist of the North? In the period from 1945 to 1970, the major tactic of the South was developmentalism. The theory that informed the actions of the movements and regimes located in the South was that “national development” was possible and was essentially a function of two steps: (1) establishing a national regime dedicated to national development; (2) then employing the correct policies.
To be sure, there was considerable disagreement about how to implement either step. This debate went on very largely within the framework of what we call the national liberation movements.
But the debate in the end was largely irrelevant. In the first place, there existed a geocultural consensus that development was possible, not only in the South but in the North. There were two versions of the story—a liberal version peddled largely by the United States and Europe and a so-called socialist version peddled primarily by the Soviet Union. But both versions insisted that a “modernizing” government (the Soviet Union called it a “socialist” government) could establish the necessary social framework to permit so-called economic development, with the assistance of appropriate governmental actions and external aid. Both versions offered the reversal of polarization in the world-system as the eventual outcome of such “developmentalist” programs. Both versions failed globally, and country by country they seemed to work at best in a few countries. The reason why a few countries developed when most did not had little to do with the particular policies followed by particular states. Rather, developmentalist policies aided a few countries, but not most, for two reasons. Only a small minority of states can ever at any given time improve their relative position in the rankings of the capitalist world-economy, given the ways in which it functions. Those states which succeeded (such as Korea or Taiwan) did so more in function of their geopolitical location (in terms of Cold War posturings) than because of any other single factor.
The period after 1970 was a period of disillusionment with “developmentalism”—both on the part of the core zones, which began to preach neoliberalism instead, and on the part of the South, which began to seek alternative paths to reducing the growing polarization. Basically, the South evolved three strategies in the post-1970 period as mechanisms to struggle with the North: (1) the assertion of radical alterity, using rhetoric that was foreign to the modern world-system; (2) direct confrontation, using tools and rhetoric deriving from the existing world system; (3) population transfer.
Radical alterity meant the rejection of the basic values of the West in the modern world-system, that is, essentially those of the Enlightenment with its theory of inevitable progress based on the spread of secularism and education. To be sure, there had always been persons throughout the world who rejected these values. But such persons and groups had for a long time been fighting essentially rear-guard actions—dragging their feet, resisting the pressures—and were largely unsuccessful. What was new and particularly important in the post-1970 era was the emergence of what might be called “modernist” movements of radical alterity. Sometimes these are called fundamentalist or integrist movements, especially when they claim to incarnate religious faiths. But we should notice several things about such movements.
First, their original and primary target was less the “West” in general and more the historic antisystemic movements in their own countries, which had espoused the developmentalist ideal. The basic argument put forward by the movements of radical alterity was that the national liberation movements had failed to deliver on their promises of transforming the social world and overcoming the polarization of the world-system. The movements of radical alterity ascribed this failure to the fact that the national liberation movements, despite their claim to being antisystemic, were in fact preaching the values of the dominant geoculture, hence were inevitably tied to the world power structure, and were therefore incapable of delivering on their promised transformations.
Second, the movements of radical alterity offered themselves as agents of the civil society against the failed states of the South.
They stepped in wherever and whenever these states were unable to provide basic assistance to the needy in their state, which was almost all the time. The movements of radical alterity offered material as well as spiritual comfort to those that were in pain, while the movements of national liberation coasted on the glories of past nationalist struggles and quite often padded the pockets of the new Nomenklatura.
Third, the movements of radical alterity were deeply involved in the technological advances of the modern world, utilizing—and effectively—all the modern infrastructure of communications, technology, and warfare. It has often been noted that such movements of radical alterity have been able to recruit strongly among university students in engineering and the hard sciences. Finally, these movements of radical alterity invented a theology that was seldom traditional, if by that is meant one that was preached and practiced centuries ago. They utilized the texts to reinterpret them, to render them most able to create political structures in the modern world that could survive and thrive. But of course in order to demonstrate their unswering alterity, these movements had to assert their absolute opposition, at a theoretical and personal level, to whatever incarnated the West.
The most spectacular such movement of radical alterity was that led by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. It dethroned a leading ally of the North, in a wealthy, large state. It denounced the United States as the Great Satan, and the Soviet Union as Satan No. 2. It defied international law by seizing the United States embassy, and it survived. For a while it raised hysterical hackles in the United States, and the U.S. consequently encouraged the Arab world in general, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq in particular, to seek to contain, eventually to overthrow, the Iranian regime. That this movement was unable to spread far beyond its borders is primarily a function of the fact that it based its claims on a particular religious tradition which has adherents in only a few other countries.
It did, however, let us see that a movement of radical alterity can resonate deeply in the South and demonstrate great political strength. It became, in formal terms, a model for other such movements. It is not that movements like Aum Shinrikyo in Japan or Al Qaeda are consciously modeled on Khomeini’s movement. It is that they are utilizing some of the same techniques of social organization and some of the same kinds of rhetoric. There are today many such movements, some strong, some minor, most in the South but many in the North as well. What they represent is a continuing (and largely unpredictable) pressure against the kind of stability on which the North relies to maintain its position of privilege. It is a force whose impact should grow greater, not less, in the next twenty-five to fifty years, given the chaotic struggles of a world-system in structural crisis. Such movements are one expression of the political chaos, and will not disappear until the transition from our existing world-system to its successor world-system is completed. In the meantime, they represent a continuing military headache for the North.
The second tool of the South, strategy of direct confrontation, is quite different from the strategy of radical alterity. One might think that confrontation is the most normal aspect of interstate relations. But in point of fact the weaker nations of the South have usually avoided confrontation with the North, precisely because they were weaker. Many of the confrontations were provoked by the North, which wished to impose something or prevent something that was being done by a state in the South. What I am speaking of now is the possibility of direct confrontations provoked by the South.
The model example is Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. It seems to me that the way to understand this best is neither to assume that Hussein was somehow mad or that he was simply a vicious conqueror of a neighbor. I think Hussein’s calculation was Bismarckian—bold chess moves that would expose the weaknesses of the North, strengthen the South (specifically in this case the Arab world) militarily, and prepare for future shifts in the balance of world power.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, there were, I believe, in Saddam Hussein’s mind, two possibilities. The world (that is, the North plus Saudi Arabia) would not react and he would win the gambit. Or the world would react, and he would end up with a truce at the line of departure. He did not think that he would lose the war, lose power, and see Western troops occupy Iraq. Of course, as we know, it was the second outcome that occurred—a truce at the line of departure. To be sure, Iraq was saddled with inspections and injunctions to destroy weapons of mass destruction. We know that these U.N. actions were partially successful but partially unsuccessful.
We must ask why the U.S.-led forces did not march on Baghdad in 1991. There was a series of reasons that seemed to persuade the U.S. government that this would not be a wise option. (1) It would be costly, in military terms, and probably lead to considerable loss of life, which in turn would be unacceptable to the American public, and would revive the so-called Vietnam syndrome. (2) It might be impossible to install a replacement regime in power that could stabilize the situation and hold the country together. And neither Turkey nor Saudi Arabia wanted Iraq to fall apart because of the consequences each would suffer were there a Kurdish state in the north and a Shiite state in the south. (3) A prolonged war would probably be immediately destabilizing for a large number of regimes in the whole Middle East. (4) A replacement regime might only be able to survive with an interim occupation army of U.S.-led troops, which might cause significant internal U.S. problems. What all these considerations added up to is that the United States simply was not strong enough to march on Baghdad.
The analysis of the hawks that has driven U.S. world policy since September 11 and perhaps will do so for several years to come is that all these considerations were essentially invalid, and that acting on the basis of them permitted a political victory for Saddam Hussein. That is why the United States is now engaged in marching on Baghdad. We shall soon see whose predictions are most valid. Should things turn out as both Saddam Hussein and the first Bush administration expected they would, the march on Baghdad will lead to a major political defeat for the United States. It will then encourage other states in the South to follow the example of Saddam Hussein in his cautiously bold Bismarckian strategy. In any case, we may be sure that the drive to acquire nuclear weapons is fundamental to the tactics of the stronger states in the South. They know that they cannot compete with U.S. nuclear capacity. But they intend to obtain weapons that can incur enough damage so that they act as a deterrent. The U.S. attempt to contain proliferation is at the very most a delaying mechanism, and cannot succeed. It didn’t work when the U.S. was far more powerful than it is today, and we may expect to see another dozen nuclear powers within the next decade.
The last element in the cupboard of strategic tools for the South is one that is not played consciously but may well be the most telling of the three. The socio-economic polarization of the worldsystem is matched by a demographic polarization, which has become acute only in the last fifty years. The simple fact is that the states in the North are not reproducing their populations in sufficient number to fill their employment needs and to maintain a sufficiently large working-age population to sustain the programs of economic transfers (social security and medical care primarily) to the ever-growing percentage of the population over sixty-five. The North needs immigrants, and needs them badly.
At the same time, the South is filled with persons of some training and education and with some money who are unable to find appropriate employment and income in their home countries, and are thus willing and anxious to emigrate to the North. However, although the North needs these immigrants, they are politically unpopular among large segments of the population of the North, who believe that the immigrants threaten jobs and wage levels and engage in antisocial practices in these countries. This conflicting pressure means that the governments of the North are repeatedly ambiguous on the issue of welcoming immigrants. They blow hot and cold. From the point of view of potential immigrants, this encourages the use of illegal channels to immigrate.
The result of this situation, which will become worse in the decades to come, is that there is a large wave of South-to-North immigration, much of which is illegal. Though legal barriers exist and are constantly being strengthened, they are unable to stanch the flow. However, once the illegal immigrants arrive and become part of the ongoing social networks, there is pressure both for and against legalizing their status. What this means over time is that the North is creating a large stratum of persons resident in the country who have less than full political, economic, or social rights. How much less varies according to particular states of the North, but the stratum exists everywhere and will grow. We can expect this to be a great source of political tension internal to the North, one that will affect not only the stability of countries in the North but their ability to pursue their interests in the North-South struggle.
The Davos–Porto Alegre Cleavage
The World Economic Forum was founded in 1971, and is commonly referred to as Davos, because it has met there every year (except 2002). It describes itself as “an independent organization committed to improving the state of the world . . . by creating partnerships between and among business, political, intellectual and other leaders of society to define, discuss and advance key issues on the global agenda.” The World Social Forum has been meeting annually only since 2001, and is commonly referred to as Porto Alegre, the Brazilian city where it has held its initial meetings. It describes itself as “an open meeting place where groups and movements of civil society opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism, but engaged in building a planetary society centred on the human person, come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, in order to formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for effective action.” Davos boasts of having as members over one thousand of foremost global companies.” Porto Alegre boasts of bringing together over one thousand of “the widest range of social movements.” The difference in social base is patent.
The spirit of Davos and the spirit of Porto Alegre are in direct counterposition one to the other. Davos came into existence to be a meeting ground of the powerful and would-be powerful of the world seeking to coordinate in some sense their actions and to establish a normative worldwide program, a gospel to be spread. Porto Alegre came into existence to challenge Davos—its underlying philosophy, its specific programs, its vision of the future. The slogan of Porto Alegre is “Another world is possible.” Other than which? Obviously, the world envisaged and implemented by Davos.
Of course, both these structures are forums. They are public arenas hoping to be observed publicly and to persuade publicly. But Davos is also a locale where the conflicts of the Triad can be displayed, debated, and perhaps attenuated. It is a locale in which the North can pursue its objectives, hopefully with the concurrence of some political, economic, and intellectual leaders located in the South. Porto Alegre, on the other hand, has sought to bring together movements of all kinds—transnational, regional, national, and local, but, most important, from both South and North. It seeks to restructure the world-system. It seeks to be generally on the side of the South in North-South issues. But it is also deeply concerned with the internal life of the North. It has no position on the conflicts among the Triad, and has thus far largely ignored them.
Both the spirit of Davos and the spirit of Porto Alegre are movements of transformation. Davos is no more for the status quo than is Porto Alegre. They both are built on the premise that major structural changes are possible, imminent, and desirable. But their vision of what these should be or can be is substantially different, even diametrically opposed. In my language, though not always explicitly in theirs, they represent reactions to a world-system in structural crisis, a world-system therefore undergoing chaotic bifurcation, a world-system in which there are real political and moral choices to be made, one in which such choices have a realistic possibility of affecting the outcome.
What Future for the World?
The cleavage between the spirit of Davos and the spirit of Porto Alegre knows no geographical localization. It is clearly the most fundamental cleavage of the three, because it is the one that is concerned with the future of the world not over the next twenty five to fifty years but over the next five hundred years. But the actual trajectory of this cleavage is enormously constrained by, and will be deeply affected by, the evolution of the two other cleavages in the next few decades—that among the Triad, and that of North versus South.
Because the future is intrinsically indeterminate, the most one can do is signal the most likely loci of acute, sudden change in the next decade:
- It is quite possible that, as a result of the second Iraq war, nuclear weapons will be used and become banalized as a mode of warfare. If this happens, we may expect a rapid acceleration of proliferation.
- The ability of the dollar to remain the world’s only real reserve currency may come to a sudden end. It is currently based on faith in greater economic stability in the United States than in other members of the Triad. It has permitted the U.S. to have a major economic advantage. But given the enormity of the U.S. debt, any collapse of this faith could result in a rapid withdrawal of non-U.S. money from U.S. investments and create in one fell swoop a tri-monetary reserve system.
- Although the euro is going strong and it is likely that the holdouts (Great Britain, Sweden, and Denmark) will soon join it, Europe has two interlocked problems that are not easily solved. It needs to create a responsible political structure of some kind, and it is being besieged by applicants. The two pressures do not necessarily go in the same direction. If Europe cannot establish a viable political structure, it will be quite weakened in the inter-Triadic struggle. Europe’s interests in permitting the entry of eastern and central European states and its interests in closer relations with Russia do not necessarily go in the same direction. Failure to come to terms with Russia will also weaken Europe in the inter- Triadic struggle.
- Both Russia and China are giant powers, weaker than they could be or want to be. Both of them have the problem of remaining unified states, expanding the base of their productive enterprises, and strengthening their armed forces. If they succeed in these three areas, the geopolitics of the world will be transformed quite suddenly. If they fail, the chaotic consequences would reverberate across the globe.
- The drive toward Korean unification is as strong as was the drive for German unification. The two situations are not identical, and the Korean case is informed by the Koreans’ observations of what happened in Germany. But new generations are arriving in power, and Korean unification is definitely on the agenda, in one form or another. A reunited Korea would be a powerful actor in East Asia, and might make more possible an East Asian trinity of China-Korea-Japan, if only because the presence of Korea would cushion the inevitable tensions between China and Japan. A reunited Korea would reduce radically the military role of the United States in East Asia.
- Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have been in many ways pillars of the present structures of the Middle East. Each has been able historically to balance the needs of a modernizing, pro-Western elite with a very Islamist population. They have done this by maintaining an ambiguous relationship with the United States. Bin Laden’s actions are clearly aimed at destroying these regimes, and bin Laden seems to have enlisted George Bush on his side by getting Bush to push the two regimes to end their ambiguities. The collapse of either regime, a fortiori of both, would have a rolling impact throughout the Islamic world from Morocco to Indonesia, from Uzbekistan to the Sudan.
- There has been a quiet rumble of rebellion throughout Latin America in the last few years—in Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, to name only the most obvious sites. The taming of Latin America by the United States, the grand project of the 1980s and 1990s, may suddenly collapse too, in the backyard of the United States, and possibly to the rapid advantage of Europe and Japan.
- Many of these changes would strengthen the hands of the proponents of the spirit of Porto Alegre. But this movement is beset by a very loose structure and a lack of specificity concerning their positive program. It too could fall apart. But if it does not, it might find itself in a very strong position circa 2010.
That is as far as one can go in discerning the geopolitical cleavages of the twenty-first century. What future for the world? The answer is uncertain. But it is quite certain than we can all, individually and collectively, affect that future more than we think, precisely because we live in an era of transition, of chaotic bifurcations, of choice.
Immanuel Wallernstein, The Decline of American Power, Chapter XIII, pp 273-294, 2003, London, The New Press