Exodus From Empire: The Fall of America's Empire and the Rise of the Global Community - Hardcover

Paupp, Terrence E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745326145 ISBN 13: 9780745326146

Verlag: Pluto Press, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

-- A vision of a new world order that looks forward to the end of IMF hegemony -- 'There is no book quite like this ... Paupp has achieved a well-articulated alternative vision of a future world order based on law, equity, and sustainability.' Professor

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Rex Brynen is Professor of Political Science at McGill University. He is author, editor, or coeditor of eight books on various aspects of Palestinian and Middle East politics. He has served as a consultant for various governments, the World Bank and the UN.Roula El-Rifai is a senior programme specialist with the Middle East Unit and the Governance, Security and Justice Programme Initiative at the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa. She is co-editor of Palestinian Refugees: Challenges of Repatriation and Development (2007).

Terrence E. Paupp has taught philosophy, international law, and political science at Southwestern College and National University. He is Vice-President of the Association of World Citizens and a senior research associate for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. From 2001-2005 he served as National Chancellor of the United States for the International Association of Educators for World Peace.

Terrence E. Paupp has taught philosophy, international law, and, Political science at Southwestern College and National University.

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Exodus From Empire

The Fall of America's Empire and the Rise of the Global Community

By Terrence E. Paupp

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2007 Terrence E. Paupp
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-2614-6

Contents

Acknowledgments, xii, 
Preface, xiv, 
List of Abbreviations, xvii, 
INTRODUCTION, 1, 
1 FROM PRECEDENCE WE COME, 19, 
2 THE OCCUPATIONS OF EMPIRE, 30, 
3 WHEN THE "LAW OF THE LAND" BECOMES LAWLESS, 61, 
4 CLASH OR CONVERGENCE?, 100, 
5 THE HIDDEN POLITICS OF EMPIRE, 172, 
6 CLAIMING "A RIGHT OF PEACE", 260, 
7 CONCLUSION, 339, 
Notes, 346, 
Index, 417, 
About the Author, 424, 

CHAPTER 1

From Precedence We Come

The future is not a mere repetition of what has come before. We are haunted by our old concepts, ideologies, and our very nature. The influence of the past has not entirely dissipated from consciousness or memory. Perhaps that is one reason why postapartheid South Africa embarked upon a review of the atrocities of the old system through its Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In order to truly open the future for new possibilities, history must be dealt with, understood, and given meaning. In this important sense, the past is prologue.

Certainly, history seems to contain large segments of human experience that repeat the past. Everything from building global empires, to creating more peaceful communities, is expressed by and contained within the matrix of human imagination. The historical expression of these visions and aspirations is conditioned by the practical realities of time, place, and situation.

Throughout the history of civilizations the quest for either empire or community is a constant theme. Both empire and community represent a particular application of human power and purpose. Some scholars have attempted to categorize these two forms of governance into different kinds of experiments. The differentiations of these experiments have been expressed as tribal, imperial, and commercial. Making such distinctions is vital to our understanding if we are to comprehend the implications of different kinds of social, economic, and political processes across time and civilizations.

The tribal experiment refers to domestic-scale culture (scale calls attention to growth thresholds, order of magnitude increases in the size of societies, and any new cultural features that are required to sustain larger systems). Tribal experiments are more inclusive. They do not operate as an imperium because no single person or dominant minority could direct it by gaining permanent control over the entire society.

The imperial experiment refers to societies that were much larger than tribal ones. In addition, strategic resources in the imperial world have historically been controlled by dominant political imperia (imperia is the plural of imperium, the Latin word for command over others, rule by an individual, or rule by an elite few). The danger of imperia is that when individuals are allowed to create increasingly expanding imperia, the fundamental human rights of others may be threatened. Hence, while an imperium can benefit society at large, its unlimited or unrestrained power is always potentially dangerous. Dangers arise when antidemocratic elites are interested primarily in their own self-aggrandizement of wealth, power, and control.

The commercial experiment refers to the phenomena of "globalization." Globalization embodies a practice of capitalism that separates the control of capital from producers and consumers. Under the auspices of the "Reagan Revolution" the nations of the poor South were increasingly relegated to the role of cheap producers of capital goods. Thanks to the Reagan roll back of the 1980s and the passage of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the 1990s, the consumers of the rich North became the beneficiaries of the new global stewards of sweatshop ownership and other labor-saving devices.

The commercialization of the world's networks of employment and investment has created a global market for transnational corporations. It concentrates power by co-opting the political processes of governments. The new global financial agenda seeks to produce and maintain "for profit" business enterprises regardless of the collateral damage done to the environment and workers of the exploited regions of investment and production. This phenomenon is the financial arm of America's "Global Empire." The operations of this empire exhibit high degrees of exclusion in its political and economic effects. The cost of "doing business" is at the expense of marginalized groups and nations that have been subordinated to the hierarchical structures of capitalism's Global Empire.

Despite historical differences between the aforementioned categories, as well as the attempt to neatly categorize the various experiments in global governance, there are strong linkages between the imperial and the commercial experiments. As Ellen Wood has commented, "older forms of imperialism depended directly on conquest and colonial rule. Capitalism has extended the reach of imperial domination far beyond the capacities of direct political rule or colonial occupation, simply by imposing and manipulating the operations of a capitalist market." Some examples of the controlling reach of capital since 1945 are seen in the operations of the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. The controlling powers behind these organizations are Western governments and the corporations that they serve at the center of the capitalist world. Further, each of these institutions has been geared to drive the process of corporate globalization since the 1980s. In this regard, globalization drives empire just as the pursuit of empire sustains the process of globalization.

The majority of humankind remains excluded from the decision-making centers of the capitalist world system. The term "periphery" has been used to describe Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in relation to the centers of global capitalism. The relationship between the northern and southern hemispheres has constituted the geographical dividing line between the rich nations of the North and the impoverished nations of the South.

The period of the 1970s was a short-lived period in which the Third World sought to assert itself against the nations of the North vis-à-vis the "Non-Aligned Nations Movement" (NAM). The period would be remembered as a brief interlude that promised a "North/South dialog." Despite the high hopes of those seeking progressive change in favor of the South there would be no reprieve. The nature of the dialog would be ultimately determined by the structure of America's "Global Empire" of immutable power relations. There would be no escape from the financial subordination of the South to the North that characterizes this system.

Given the power of capitalist classes to dominate and control landless workers, it would seem that a capitalist empire could simply rely on economic pressures to exploit subordinate societies. But this is not necessarily the case because "just as workers had to be made dependent on capital and kept that way, so subordinate economies must be made vulnerable to economic manipulation by capital and the capitalist market — and this can be a very violent process." For example, just because the IMF has the financial power to impose loan conditionality upon Third World governments does not mean that the IMF enjoys political legitimacy. In fact, very often a social crisis...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pluto Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0745326145
• ISBN 13: 9780745326146
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 472
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar