Globalization: The End of Sovereignty

In the 21st century, civilization has become increasingly interconnected on a global scale. More than ever before, the  success of any nation now depends on the success of all others. This new world emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the system of American capitalism became unrivaled. Combined with a long-term push towards "free-trade" policies, the new-found dominance of capitalism tore down economic barriers between nations. Corporations became international, with no preference between nations other than the maximization of their profits. This trend towards a global economy will have profound consequences that we are beginning to deal with today. Although globalization has yielded some clear benefits, there are many serious problems with the current direction of global politics that need to be addressed.

The most serious danger of globalization is that it threatens to end national sovereignty. For a nation to govern itself independently, following the principle of self-determination, it must have control over its own economic system. All nations are different, and the same economic system might be beneficial to one while being detrimental to another. History is filled with examples of nations trying to impose their own economic system on other nations, and this often leads to social unrest and war. The leaders of such an aggressor nation might believe that their economic system would benefit other nations, but their true motivation is likely the furthering of their own interests. The United States is no exception. Our politicians praise American-style capitalism with utopian rhetoric, while we impose it on other nations through wars that were planned explicitly to further our own interests. In nations like Greece, where capitalism is no longer working, we can already see the rise of extreme politics on both ends of the political spectrum. Because Greece is so tightly connected to other capitalist nations, it has no other option but to satisfy the demands of the global market at the expense of its own people. Whether by the force of an army or of economic influence, the most vulnerable nations in the world are now being oppressed by the global system of capitalism.

The nations that control an economic system also control the natural resources in that system. This provides even more incentive for nations to spread an economic system that works in their favor. With the increasing scarcity of energy resources, particularly oil, the trend of globalization has dark implications. Controlling energy resources will soon mean the difference between modern life and a collapse into pre-industrial society. If the principles of sovereignty and democracy were still valued, the natural resources of every nation would be controlled democratically by their own population. Instead, we live in a world where the oil flows towards whoever has the most money and guns. When American politicians speak of securing oil production for the world market, they are talking about asserting capitalism's control over the natural resources of other nations. We have taken our role as the "Arsenal of Democracy" for granted, forgetting that it was justified by a commitment to the sovereignty of all nations. Motivated by either a lack of empathy or the fear of reprisal, we are now committed to the strategy of domination.

Map of Occupy protests, 2011

Fortunately, there is some good news about the effects of globalization. As the world has become more economically interconnected, it has also become more socially interconnected due to advances in communication technology. The internet has revolutionized the way people interact, and its implications for society are only beginning to be seen. Future historians may one day view the internet as a modern printing press, an invention that radically democratized the spread of information. The ubiquity of mobile phones has also contributed to today's wired society, allowing us carry a connection to the network with us wherever we go. With a political system designed in the 18th century, modern government seems completely unprepared to handle the new political consciousness that is being facilitated by modern networks. Combined with an economic crisis that has persisted for years now, modern communication has given rise to protest movements that transcend national borders. Both the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement would have been impossible before the era of globalization. People are beginning to see themselves as victims of a system that is larger than any single nation, which brings the realization that their problems cannot be solved by any one nation alone. Whether it is the economic crisis, peak oil, or global warming, the problems of the 21st century require global solutions. It seems inevitable that globalization will continue, regardless of how many protest movements spring up in defiance. There is only one question: Will the global system save civilization, or will it make us all fight each other for the scraps of its collapse?

Peak Oil: The End of the Industrial Era

For a society so reliant on oil, America is strangely unconcerned with the long-term implications of peak oil. Unlike global warming, which often gets labeled as a hoax (often by those who profit from it), there is no debate about the fact that oil production will eventually peak and then decline. The only question is when. Even though some data suggests that peak oil may have already occurred, most people seem to think the end of the oil economy is many decades away. Our culture and our politics are in denial about imminence of this threat. The mainstream news is happy to praise a new windmill or solar plant, but this paints a picture far rosier than reality. It is by no means apparent that advancing renewable energy technology will allow us to sustain the modern lifestyle that we take for granted. The unfortunate truth is that we will have to drastically change our lifestyle and economy if civilization is to survive after peak oil.

Global oil production (with projections), 2003

Perhaps the most disturbing implications of peak oil is a decline in food production. Because much of the world's agriculture has been industrialized, it now relies on a cheap supply of oil and electricity. This means that a rise in oil prices will result in a rise in food prices. Furthermore, most of the food people eat in America is shipped long distances in vehicles that consume oil. A sudden increase in oil prices could thus threaten to collapse our entire food production and distribution system. A rational society, faced by the prospect of starvation, would take measures to prevent such a calamity. If we had more local sources of food, we would both reduce the need for transportation and increase the redundancy of the system. If every town had its own source of food, they would have a buffer against rising prices for imported food. These local food sources would be smaller in scale and less reliant on large industrial machinery. Old farming techniques, such as the use of a horse-drawn plow, could be relearned if necessary. There is much that can be done to prepare us for the consequences of peak oil, but nothing will be done until we admit that dramatic change is necessary.  

Our conceptions of modern life leave us blind to the big picture of history. People have become accustomed to the idea of progress, the trend of accelerating technological and economic development that has persisted for the past few centuries. As a result of this development, human civilization has been able to support an explosion of population growth. Because this trend has continued for many generations, an end to it is almost unimaginable. Especially in America, a nation in which even the poorest citizens dream of a more prosperous future, an end to economic growth would threaten to shatter our entire world view. Even as we enter our fifth year of economic recession, the politicians reassure us that a recovery is just around the corner. Our leaders do not dare to suggest that our way of life is unsustainable, and that are faith in the future is unjustified. If we are to avoid a total collapse of modern civilization as we know it, we must redefine our notion of progress. In the calculations of capitalist institutions, more is always better. The solution, according to them, for the scarcity of oil is simply to invest more resources in oil production, thus increasing our dependence on oil. This kind of short-sighted thinking is rampant in the centers of power that run the world. They tell us what we want to hear, to preserve the status quo that suits them. We must wake up from this sleepwalk into a dystopian future and take responsibility for the future that we hope to create. If there is any real progress in the 21st century, it will not be in the quantity of civilization but rather the quality. If we fail to create a system based on sustainability, efficiency, and cooperation, the struggles of human history will all have been in vain.

American Militarism: Arsenal of Democracy or Capitalism?

US invasion of Normandy, 1944

Military strength has always been a defining characteristic of the United States, ever since the nation's inception as an armed rebellion. We pioneered modern warfare during our civil war, which remains one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. By the end of the Second World War, America had achieved a position of military dominance rivaled only by the Soviet Union. After the collapse of this adversary in 1991, American dominance became unchallenged. Until that point, our investments in armed forces could be justified as "defense spending", protecting us from some external threat. Once the Cold War ended, however, no such threat existed. One would think that a military praised as the "Arsenal of Democracy" would reduce its size when democracy was no longer threatened. Instead, the US Military has continued to grow well into the 21st century. The only plausible explanation for this continued military expansion is that America is not an arsenal of democracy, but rather an arsenal of capitalism.

Industrial Workers of the World poster, 1911

Essential to any understanding of American militarism is the concept of resource competition. With military power comes control of key strategic resources, which can be used to further the interests of the nation that owns them. Undoubtedly, the most important strategic resources are energy resources, especially oil. The lifeblood of both the modern economy and the modern war machine, oil is an indispensable resource for any modern nation. It is therefore a strategic imperative of any nation, including the United States, to ensure that it has an adequate and reliable source of oil for the foreseeable future. A democratic nation's need for energy security is no less than that of a dictatorship, but the policies by which a nation pursues this strategic imperative reveal the extent to which it truly values democracy.

Lucas Gusher in Texas, 1901

There is a long-standing precedent in American foreign policy to use military force to guarantee our future supply of oil. During World War II, securing oil production was of course a military concern of paramount importance. After the war, however, the United States was faced with a choice about how to approach energy security. On one hand, we could have relied on the post-war spread of democracy in oil-rich regions. Considering our self-proclaimed role as the arsenal of democracy, it would not have been unreasonable to assume that emerging democratic states in the Middle East and elsewhere would be willing to sell us as much oil as we need. The policy we pursued instead was to continue to dominate these regions by military force, as if the war had never ended. This fateful decision has had profound consequences that we are still dealing with today.

Roosevelt's meeting with Saudi King, 1945

The best example of America's policy of controlling oil-rich regions is our relationship with Saudi Arabia. Since 1945, when President Roosevelt famously met with King Abdulaziz ibn Saud, Saudi Arabia has been one of the United States' closest allies. In return for access to their vast supply of oil, we promised to protect the kingdom from all threats, external and internal. Although not the first time America has made deals with less-than-democratic nations, this agreement shows how empty our commitment to democracy is. Our close ties with Saudi Arabia, a country marred not only by corruption but by outright feudalism, makes the United States hypocritical at best, and imperialistic according to some. American values, it seems, are trumped by American interests. Through the prism of cold-war thinking, this kind of alliance may seem like a necessary measure. But to the people living under US-supported authoritarian regimes, this argument must seem ridiculous. If a nation is fighting for democracy, it should fight for it everywhere. To repress democracy in one nation in order to protect it in another is on the same moral level as enslaving one group of people to protect the prosperity of another.

US military bases in the Middle East, 2007

American military expansion can be better explained in terms of economics. We use military force not to protect democracy, but rather to protect the global capitalist system and our interests within that system. The Cold War, perceived by Americans as a conflict between democracy and dictatorship, can be more accurately described as a conflict between two economic systems. Both superpowers viewed their own system as more democratic, and they feared each other out of self-preservation. If the Soviet Union had been successful in creating the worker's utopia that it claimed to be fighting for, it may well have caused the United States to become the "Evil Empire" in the eyes of future historians. After all, America had invaded the Soviet Union during its revolutionary beginnings between 1918 and 1920, an act of aggression never reciprocated against us. To explain the US foreign policy as simply a reaction to Soviet aggression is a politically convenient oversimplification. The reality is that both superpowers used military force to pursue their respective economic interests, with the fates of other nations being an afterthought.

US troops in Vladivostok, Russia, 1918

After the Cold War, when capitalism itself was no longer rivaled by any other economic system, the mission of our armed forces became even more selfish. If we truly believed, as Milton Friedman argued, that capitalism always leads to democracy, the triumph of capitalism would have meant the triumph of democracy. Therefore, we would no longer be able to justify our military as being the arsenal of democracy because democracy was no longer under threat, according to our ideology. While many repressive governments existed after the Cold War and continue to exist to this day, most have been integrated into the global capitalist system (most notably among them, Russia and China) and none come even close to rivaling our military dominance like the Soviet Union did. Although we continue to have wars, the massive amounts of money that the United States spends on its military can in no way be justified as defense spending.

Distribution of global military spending, 2008

Politicians filled the void by inventing the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror", distracting us from the fact that no real external threat exists. If any nation is a threat to democracy today, it is the United States itself. We fear the complete realization of our purported values, the spread of democracy everywhere in the world. The portrayal of Muslims and Arabs on the American media as fundamentalist, anti-democratic, and prone to extremism, which was especially common during the Bush era, is ignorant of the role played by the United States in suppressing democracy and supporting fundamentalist regimes in the region. In our efforts to secure our energy security, we take by force what we fear would not be given to us willingly. Because we fear that the people living in oil-rich regions would not give us what we need if they were under democratic government, we suppress their democracy by supporting dictators and invading if necessary. The nature of capitalism is competitive, and with many growing rivals to American economic dominance, this projection of military power for our own economic benefit has been accepted as sound policy by both major political parties. Despite the lofty ideals that many politicians invoke in their speeches, it's likely the money from war contractors that makes up their minds. If nothing else, America is guilty of hubris for trying to spread democracy to the world when it is so obviously lacking in its own government. If the 21st century is to be the golden age of democracy that the previous generations fought for, we must realize that the greatest threat to peace is the arsenal of capitalism.