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Towards a world master switch. Interview
Alfredo Jalife-Rahme * Ariel Ruiz Mondragón
Currently, no doubt, the world is in a severe crisis that is leading us to rethink not only economic but also political and social world. That crisis was a devastating result of a serious error and policy of the United States and imposed, with its allies, much of the world. Finally, self-destructive effects have exploded, which has brought conflicts and disputes that threaten the future of humanity.
Among those who have been diagnosed better Decline and Fall of predatory model of unregulated globalization must be counted Alfredo Jalife-Rahme, who predicted this crisis in his book The end of an era. Turbulence in globalization (Buenos Aires, Libros del Thrush, 2007), which deals with the misadventures of a unipolar geo-economic and geopolitical order is fired to make way for a multipolar world, which involves several options under consideration by the author.
About this book talk with author, talk in which we address, inter alia, the following topics: models that open before the fall of the U.S., the role and potential of various countries and regions in the multipolar world, the weaknesses of the leading countries in the world master switch, this democracy and the nation state, and the possibilities armed conflicts worldwide. Jalife-Rahme
is one of the largest Mexican specialists in international relations. Besides being a professor at UNAM, a regular contributor to newspapers like El Financiero and La Jornada , and has been a commentator on CNN in English on Channel 40. He is the author of more than five books on geopolitics and globalization.
Ariel Ruiz (AR): Why write and publish a book like yours?
Alfredo Jalife-Rahme (AJR): I think we should have condensed the ideas, keep them handy for reference. There are different types of books: it is not a novel than a book that, as in this case, I would say is prospective, also dared to make a prediction that seems that it is occurring. This takes another dimension.
addition, I am a university professor, and I support operational management text in my courses, more than fame, and wanting to get rich selling the book, which is not my case.
AR: Your book, broadly speaking, deals with the unipolar world order under the scheme of financial globalization has benefited only large multinational corporations. Suggests that multipolarity is looming, highlighting the open sides by Russia and China. Is that multipolarity and deglobalization spoken of the end of the book, involves some radical change in the economic model imposed under the U.S. domain?
AJR: Well, that model and over, even in U.S. bank failures they have had. This country has more than 7 000 500 banks, the bet is whether they will break five thousand or six thousand, to put it that size. Then, this model is totally insolvent.
what we're seeing here is an axiom that even driving in the United States: privatization of profits and socialization of losses. It is bailing out those who created the crisis, and that obviously creates great uneasiness in the population.
Whither the world? What we are seeing is that by a hybrid world. But it really has not been put into question the capitalist model, but perhaps it the neoliberal model. We are going, I would say, a regulated capitalism, having spent the model of unregulated capitalism. That itself is unclear.
Now, it has many layers, for example, in my book I talk about the world's master switch, which consists of U.S., European Union and the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China). What we are seeing in these countries? For example, Brazil is a socialist government, but is not a Marxist socialism, but rather I would say it is a social free market. Then, if we are going to Russia is also a social democracy free market. If we are to China, well, there is the hybrid model par excellence, because the structure is common with free trade areas (especially on the coast, in the region of Huang Dong and Shanghai, which is obviously free trade; but it is not neoliberal, ie no deregulation). The only deregulation that led to its ultimate consequences were the United States and Britain, who are now paying their costs.
Whither the world? I think you have to make several considerations: the world is over America's unipolar world and go to the master switch, which is multipolar, with strong regional USA with its zones of influence as well as the European Union, but has problems of cohesion, Russia, with its area of \u200b\u200bdominance in the region of Caucasus and Central Asia, China and India as well, and not to mention Brazil in South America.
So that's the trend that we are going. So I call the hybrid world: no longer the world of G-7, he fell, and we are seeing the emergence of the BRIC. We are seeing that balance today because although it has dropped the G-7 still has a good place, while the BRIC just ascending. But now we see this balance, even at the military level and took place between Russia and the United States, it is very clear.
There are a hallmark of this hybrid is the energy issue. Russia handles very well, and he understood that the time of the hydrocarbons (which Mexico has not, quite the contrary) and now has played an exquisite oil card, I would say that even in South America Venezuela has done wonderfully.
AR: In this world, what role master switch is designed to develop the Anglo-Saxon duo, who tries so hard in the book?
AJR: I used to think I was going to play a better role. Britain is no longer the great power in the European Union has nuclear weapons (like France), that heavy. But in economic terms has long been overtaken by Germany, and France is virtually tied. Those are the three main European Union, like it or not.
What happens is that because Britain can not pull the European Union to its model. Has its special relationship with the United States, and will continue, but the U.S. is falling and hence also the British. Obviously that has a role, but, for example, is not an adversary of the size of Russia.
AR: In this world master switch that is already seeing, what role can generally play a secondary actor in history, such as Latin America? Of course, Brazil is in the BRIC, and you express yourself well in Venezuela in the book, and politics neoliberal Argentina, for example.
AJR: Latin America as a whole, do not know, because it is already divided. The break did Jorge Castañeda Gutman and Vicente Fox in America has been very costly for Mexico, also Mexico itself is already built, if we go to the secret agreements of the SPP's March 23, 2005 - the military draft energy security , banking, finance U.S.. That's why Mexico is doing so poorly, because he bet on the U.S. model rather than be stationed at the South American model. It's simple: the last country in Latin American growth is Mexico, with 2.5 percent, while Latin America is at 6 percent. I think that says it all.
South America may be, has the potential to be one of the main poles of the world, first of all by Brazil itself. Many times I would like to change the BRIC to SRIC: B instead of putting the S in South America, if it gets developed further (it will not be easy, because the United States and Britain are not going to allow, or van to try to balkanization, like what is happening in Bolivia, Argentina, with the Fourth Fleet off the coast of Venezuela, etc.). But there is South America rather than Latin, I think.
Brazil has a great weight, and is positioned, is already at the pole. But no military level, that is the problem in South America that is not a military power like the European Union, has no nuclear bombs. We see that in the order master switch, the only one without nuclear weapons is Brazil. With this I am not encouraging that this country adopts the position because I'm nuclear-abolitionist, but will have to do, if you want to keep their wealth. Unfortunately, the world has taught us that not enough to have wealth, but also need to know to keep it. In that sense, the cases of Mexico and Iraq are very pathetic, very vulnerable countries from the military standpoint, they are crushed by the U.S..
That's the Achilles heel but at the level of potentiality, it has everything: he has the Amazon, the first biosphere reserve in the world (the XXI century will be eminently biopharm, biotech), and there are all tropical species, the richest part of the world has the first water reservoir of the planet, and has the largest reserve of oil in the world. Venezuela, when coupled with conventional oil and unconventional oil reserve is the first in the world, and has gas, Brazil is now part of the top ten in the gross domestic product (GDP) in the world, is part of the first ten countries in the world foreign exchange reserves, which appears only G-7 country, which is German (it is important noted).
Brazil already is becoming an energy power, which gives us pleasure, and obviously renationalising and de-privatized, even want to create a state company for its oil will not give him the English and British, that simple.
then becomes clear: I believe that has the potential, is a real pole, nothing else has to happen, unfortunately, and that's the part that gets me itching, but that's the reality of the world-a stage nuclear. Do not forget that Brazil, in its GDP, half of South America, as well as its population. So I think that Latin America and will be bilingual, we'll have to speak two Languages: English and Portuguese (but in Mexico insist on wanting to speak English).
AR: I still have the idea that both political and economic aspects as in the military, there is an evident decline of the U.S., while still maintaining much of its power. The main responsibility for it is the Americans themselves, who have followed the wrong policy and, as you say there, irrational. Why have followed a series of steps that led to the cliff?
AJR: First of all is the military-industrial complex, which is very powerful and sets the tone for the country, has always ruled. A president (and I quote a president, not a student model) and, above all, a general, Eisenhower, is the term coined by the military-industrial complex.
must not lose sight that this is the substance of the country. But here's a great paradox: At this time the U.S. military are less belligerent than the Bush team's neocons. That is an important point: these are civilians who never went to war, not even made his military service, those who want war. The military is that they know as the United States is overexposed (no wins wars: in Iraq lost in Afghanistan is bogged down and going to lose, and now want to go to war against Iran). That's when the military jump by stating "we are not able, and although we will destroy Iran, will be destruction for destruction, but is not going to win, because they will not be able to occupy it: will it to be bombed from the skies but will not be able to occupy. " That's the great paradox.
I think that civilians have to do a regime change, and civilians have to think on what way you go: the conflict (which will lose: Today the world is not decided by military means) or cooperation. In this multipolar world we are seeing is more geo-economic and, above all, geoenergético. Russia understood this and therefore is not free that at the time found that the U.S. is very vulnerable, with a simple movement in the chess board in South Ossetia convulsed the world, that changed in the Caucasus, literally. And we have a Russian speaking face to face at the U.S. military, especially in nuclear terms. The two were destroyed in 15 minutes. Nothing to do there.
I think America has to weigh the options very well, although the military-industrial complex will continue to govern. One option is cooperation, an intelligent as the British historian Paul Kennedy said that Britain did. This, after being the great colonial power in the world for two centuries, is now in a relatively acceptable in the world, but not disappeared (which was about to happen to the Soviet Union), and that we should not lose sight.
response, Paul Kennedy quotes the Minister Salisbury, when he accepted the relative decline of Britain, and already accepted that Britain would not be the great power. Already envisioned in the nineteenth century the rise of the United States, Russia and Germany, which were the three emerging powers, and it did.
now looms that the BRICs are the new emerging powers, and that America is in decline. Well, that
will depend heavily on its elite, with an intelligent elite, the United States would still have an important place in the multipolar world, and that want to apply a unipolar world, it is not going to accept the world. In my opinion, earn more, if we make a rational calculation, the multipolar world that the unipolar world, because today America is repudiated throughout the world.
AR: On the case of China, the book points out that the great charter that diplomacy plays in the global strategic game is energy, which comes to be called "a weapon." Does not that makes it vulnerable to China on the world stage because of its weakness in that area? Much depends on Iran, Russia.
AJR: Note that this is the feature of the world: everyone is vulnerable, no one who does not have vulnerabilities. Let's look at six: energy level, the only power of the six is \u200b\u200bRussia, Brazil began to emerge (remember that until recently imported oil and ethanol has saved him, but that's another topic), but all others are vulnerable because they are energy dependent.
Another vulnerability of China's Internal thousand 500 million people, and here we apply the Pareto Law, since nothing else has benefited 20 percent and 80 percent is doing the kick. Do not forget that in China often peasant revolts. Although they have and a Five-Year Plan, will begin to distribute, to engage in social issue, and obviously to reduce the Pareto Law.
all have vulnerabilities. For example, in United States maximal vulnerability is its debt, financial issues, economic matters and is the only rule that has been the debtor in the history of mankind. Lives of others, and so has spent a lot of its militarism. It is not free you have more than 700 bases in the world, I have them in 150 countries and spent half the total world spending on military. United States is a democratic country, is a democracy of the nineteenth century because it is not even popular, but an eminently scheme Fascist.
Russia's vulnerability, what is? It has the largest territory in the world, 18 million square kilometers, but has no inhabitants, only 160 million. Brazil has eight million kilometers, but has 200 million inhabitants, the United States has nine million miles a thousand 300 million. The vulnerability of Russia is its people, but also involves two vulnerabilities with the United States, if we get to study fine details: the Islamists, who are 20 percent of its population, which is the Mexican equivalent of the United States. The Islamists in Russia will be the majority in the next generation, as well as Mexicans in the U.S..
To see the power of the countries we have to see the birth of the proletariat, which is very prolific, and we have to do the elderly. Russia is a country that tends more to the elderly, as well as the European Union.
Vulnerability of the European Union that Britain and France are the ones with nuclear weapons, but they have a cohesive policy of defense. Already have an average population of elderly. Moreover, in calculating projections Italy, if it continues its growth rate, which is negative, then disappears, Japan and not mind it, that's your problem because you added all the problems: the elderly, deflation that continues to live for more than 15 years, so it is no longer counted as a power, though it was.
If we, all countries have vulnerabilities, so it is very silly fight we must cooperate.
AR: On what I mentioned democracy, you say that globalization is nothing democratic and plutocratic there is a concentration of power.
AJR: Globalization is a model plutocratic, not democratic, so much so that it excluded the U.S. middle class, and now to what I say to the Mexicans and blacks. The greatness of America and the G-7 during the Cold War was its middle class, that's what really gave him the power, and ended the neoliberal model, because there is no middle class or the European Union or the United States. In the G-7 wiped out the middle class now have to resurrect.
AR: This new multipolar world, where they will play an important role both China and the ayatollahs of Iran, as you mentioned at the beginning of the book, have a democratic effect, when these countries also show a deficit in this area?
AJR: In democracy, human rights, before the rise of the hexapolaridad, were buried by the U.S. unipolarity as of September 11, 2001. If you want a date of death of democracy and human rights above all, was this: there are over with Patriot Act, the Patriot Act. Then do not forget that America became a country of torture. So how can we speak of both with the torture at Abu Ghraib? It became a Fascist regime.
brag United States and Britain are democracies. That does not exist. And critics of the regimes, all the great, Russia and China, as independent agencies or autocracies. Well, yes, relatively tend to it, but America is a democratic autocracy or autarky (pun intended). It seems a democracy because the mask is democratic, but always kill the president not like it, and nobody knows who was then (the Kennedy case is flagrant, and everyone knows it was the military-industrial complex, it is very clear). Then talk about democracy there ... I think it's an ideal democracy, the Greeks even when Cleisthenes invented in the sixth century BC, because democracy had its slaves.
I think that remains the model that prevails: it is a militarized democracy the United States.
Now, at the level of propaganda, it sounds nice, can pull many people, but I think I buried democracy. When they used democracy in the periphery of Russia and China, just did not for democracy: they did to destabilize those countries (the famous color revolutions: Georgia pink, orange in Ukraine, etc.). This was designed with that purpose. That is, if the military-industrial complex serves American democracy uses it, and if not ...
AR: I think, after reading the book, that the current dilemma the world is fought between two combatants on the one hand , globalists, large corporations that have benefited, and globalized, in this case civil society. In this regard, what is the role of nation states in this dispute?
AJR: Globalization undermined nation state model, but now that it is dropping the model of globalization and we are going to de-globalization, it is very simple: is resurgent nationalism, indeed, is making a comeback to levels not seen, I would call sub ( I say this respectfully, as is the indigenous). The best example is Bolivia, which already has its first indigenous president in its history.
Why? Because the base of the pyramid of power, citizen power (mostly Indians), is his way of surviving, indeed, to the suppression of transnational globalist cupular. It's fascinating what happened. Now we have the reversal, we are seeing is returning the nation state, even, I say to levels such as the autonomous provinces. It has also agreed to certain countries, Kosovo is an example. Committed a serious error there, NATO, the European Union and the United States because they believed that Russia would not respond. But to give independence to Kosovo, he speaks of that morning the Mexicans in California can do the same, they can do in Chiapas others, the Basques, Catalans, and end up not counting.
We have a world balkanization. It is the paradox: a danger deglobalization lead to multiple balkanised. But in that game also another thing happens: there are countries they realize that for just part of the great world with vast territories because we must unite, because these small countries are not viable, they will be absorbed. If you type frees South Ossetia, as Russia will absorb you, if you type frees Kosovo, you will not be independent, and forms part of the American empire. What a paradox: an independence to become part of an empire.
Then we see that we also have another option, which is stronger in countries that are aware, such as South America, it is better to join, because if not, will not be alone and nothing else will play Brazil . The best example in this regard is the European Union: two countries, like France and Germany, prefer to join rather than continuing fought by the two previous world wars, before the great power which had two poles, in a unipolar order, Germany and France alone had no effect. So they chose to join, creating the nucleus of the European Union and we need it antibalcanizadora.
I would say that in this hybrid world, to return again, we are living deglobalization, balkanization and regional realignment. It's fascinating, we are experiencing all three.
AR: I will conclude with questions. At an intellectual level, you mentioned in any of the articles in the book to Samuel Huntington. What is Huntington works as Clash of Civilizations, which you mentioned that seemed spokesman military expansionism, and then About us , promoter of the Neo-isolationism?, What was the role of intellectuals like Huntington in American politics?
AJR: It is very important, because they are the oracles of the system. A Fukuyama predecessor, who was mistaken by saying that they had reached the end of history and the triumph of liberal democracy (which is the Anglo-Saxon model). But if you read yesterday to Fukuyama, is the anti-Fukuyama, saying: "It's over the United States" seems Jalife. Well, but at the time Fukuyama caused furor because it was the oracle of the system.
and Mexico is: we like it or not, Enrique Krauze was the oracle, with Hector Aguilar Camin, the neoliberal model, it falls, as fall Krauze, Aguilar Camin and Castañeda Gutman. It's that easy. Then
Huntington is the same thing: America needs for the clash of civilizations because it served precisely parapet in the war against terrorism and especially against Islam. Nothing but the trap was the United States, because it is bogged down in its war against "terror" and he jumped Russia where it is least expected.
Then the role of organic intellectuals "I call them so, those would be Fukuyama and Huntington, and tropical folk at us, Krauze, Aguilar Camin and Castañeda Gutman, it is very sad, because they end up paying the consequences. I think that's why they are not intellectuals and become propagandists.
The moment you're a historian of CEMEX, as Krauze, or is the apologist of Zedillo and Salinas, as Aguilar Camin, and Huntington, apologist for U.S. military adventures, or the panegyrics and Fukuyama groom unipolar neoliberal model and financial globalization, well, because the prestige is in the same proportion to the stature it had. Obviously, to the rise: Krauze is the brainchild of Salinas, and Salinas will collapse, not speech.
The true intellectual does not depend on power, is a freethinker. It's like a doctor: you have to say the patient's illness, like it or not the patient. That is the work of the intellectual. In this sense, who means to me this prototype? It Diogenes, "the Cynic" or "dog" who did what when the maximum conqueror of all time, as was Alexander the Great, sought him out to talk to him as an intellectual? We're talking full commander in the history of mankind. Diogenes stands before, and the first Diogenes says it is: "Get out of my sun. The sun is bigger than you. " That is the lesson given. That's the intellectual.
AR: Let me conclude with a question about an issue that some still seem far away, that you derive from the conflict between Israel and Iran in the broader Middle East. Well, says they are middle powers who are fighting a bit on behalf of their allies in the former United States and the European Union and Russia and China another. What you see as a great war, the third world? You get to mention something about it. Will exacerbate existing conflicts can be up to that point?
AJR: We the brink of a third world war, we must be very responsible when it comes to that situation. I would, to develop that, to a consideration: still not the third, but we are in a world war in progress. There are all wars, we do not see peace in the world. Is not the same the dissolution of the USSR, which is given without any bullets, now the expansion of NATO, U.S. and Russia now reply. They are very delicate times, then the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iraq is a major consideration because, although minimal military power, especially against the United States, we do not know how Russia will react and China, because they are not allies such as Israel in the United States.
I sometimes jokingly commented: I do not know if the U.S. is the second Israel, or Israel is the state 51. I think that they are bound, this must be taken very present, Israel is the largest military base in the world with the United States in the Middle East, but with serious problems to the guerrilla Asymmetric could not with Hezbollah, which is the last straw. Asymmetric warfare now involves certain characteristics: when someone wants to lay down his life, and of course the Iranians are willing to do-not going to be a Sunday stroll, will destroy the country, but start a serious conflict, and there is a long war throughout the region, no doubt, you can extended even to America. Do not lose sight that Mexico is the U.S. border, can penetrate and leak here, no doubt.
is no coincidence that the U.S. wants us to get-ya-we had gotten to the SPP, then the Merida Initiative, and now to NORAD, which is the aerospace defense of North America, the nuclear military shield Canada United States against a nuclear attack from Russia. But it is striking that Bob Gates has said in Washington, against Beltrones, that if Mexico supported the Merida Initiative, then they incorporated into the NORAD us as if we were doing a big favor, when doing so would make us and the object of attack nuclear. Obviously, there we are taking all the enemies of the United States, which are legion. It makes me foolish what they have done unlimited Fox, Castañeda, Calderón and Beltrones. Same thing.
If we go down in history, Thucydides's classic book History of the Peloponnesian War , written five centuries before Christ, says that without intervention of the gods, wars are caused by interest, fear or honor. But I would add others, for reasons sometimes futile, accident or folly.
Another classic book by Barbara Tuchman called The March of Folly - The race to insanity -, which shows that since the Peloponnesian War to the Vietnam war, most wars have been crazy. So here already lit the fuse in the Caucasus, and the United States had set in Kosovo. There may be an accident, now on the Black Sea together, the fleets of Russia and NATO, which is very dangerous because anything can happen. Now I can say that the EU did not vote for sanctions, I think it toned down. Then we saw that Russia and also toned down his speech, which are good signs.
AR: What about Mexico?
AJR: The book is called The End of an era , I mean the United States, and also sorry to say is the end of the era of Mexico, which moved all the U.S. power unwisely.
* A shorter version of this interview appeared in Millennium weekly, no. 588, January 26, 2009. Reprinted with permission from the director. The interview was conducted in September 2008.
