theglobaljournal.net: Latest articles of Michael J. Strauss

The Invisible Ally of Europe's Independence Movements

2012-10-17T16:38:40Z

When people in Scotland or Flanders or Catalonia talk of independence, they have an invisible but powerful ally: globalization.

Nations no longer need as much territory to be viable as they did in the period of the great colonial empires, or even 25 years ago. The dismantling of international trade and financial restrictions plus technological advances that facilitate cross-border business make it unnecessary for a country to sustain itself only, or even primarily, with the fruit of its own soil.

These days, whatever a country can’t do or make at home, it can get from abroad. If it’s a fragile state that doesn’t have the financial means, it can stay afloat through official and other aid structures that have become global institutions in their own right.

Naturally, a nation benefits by having assets like natural resources and plenty of land for agriculture on its own territory. But today there are numerous alternatives. A country with little farmland can import crops, or import the food it’s made into, or buy or lease the foreign land where the crops are grown. All of these practices are already widespread, along with other more specialized ones – using commodity futures, for instance. The same holds true for oil, financial services and anything else a nation might use to sustain itself.

In exchange, a country that relies on the global market for its needs can offer various means to obtain them – money, skills, specialized knowledge, a beneficial geographical situation, rights to exploit local activities – practically anything that has value abroad. Recognizing and developing a country’s assets and using them for domestic gain is simply good governance.

Indeed, how a country is governed has arguably become more important for its long-term sustainability than having sovereignty over a large territory or even military strength beyond defensive needs. The Soviet Union more or less proved this by disappearing.

Diplomacy has been a catalyst for the diminishing importance of a state’s territorial size. The system that allows countries to be small yet viable is the product of the intertwined relations that exist through bilateral and multilateral agreements that cover everything from trade to defense.

The European Union exemplifies this on a regional scale. If its 27 members one day become 30 through the breakups of the United Kingdom, Belgium and Spain, the EU’s total territory would stay the same and the things that have happened on it would keep happening on it. That’s because of achievements like the unified market, freedom of movement for EU citizens and other EU-wide projects.

In fact, the EU’s successes like these have actually fostered a climate that can allow, say, Flanders and Wallonia to displace Belgium in the same territorial space without wrenching economic or social transitions, much less war.

Just as the medical or legal professions have become increasingly specialized, one can envision countries going down the same route: thanks to the effects of globalization, we may see a larger number of smaller countries in the future, each with its own needs and assets, and with greater interdependence and interaction among them. The modern recognition of self-determination as a human right offers the legal cover for this to occur, and the spread of democratic systems offers the mechanism.

Thus, a place like Scotland doesn’t have to rely on the fact that it produces oil in order to be a viable state, useful as it may be in the near term. The day may come when the oil, or the market for it, is no longer its economic pillar – and when that occurs, it will not matter whether Scotland is independent or still part of the United Kingdom except in how the situation is offset.

The irony is that sovereignty hasn’t lost its allure, even as the effects of globalization continue to displace sovereign control as the only option for managing a nation’s territory.

Opinions voiced by Global Minds do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Global Journal.

Rethinking State Power in the Age of the Euro Crisis

2012-05-28T12:07:58Z

The euro crisis has upset traditional ideas of what makes a nation powerful by turning Greece into one of the world’s most feared countries. It illustrates how the globalized economy gives almost any nation the chance to influence events around the world.

The government that emerges from Greece’s elections, the policies it adopts, the potential for a debt default and the threat of contagion, and the big question of whether Greece stays in the euro-zone are all concerns that provide Athens with international influence.

Greece may not be using it overtly and may have preferred not to have it, but it’s there. The country’s financial weakness is now a geo-political strength. With its potential to disrupt foreign economies, Greece has the ability to unleash a broad wave of country-by-country problems that can put new and challenging demands on other governments.

Having financial exposure to Greece - or even exposure to countries that are exposed to Greece - is enough to make many countries nervous. Creditors are dispersed so widely that no single nation can help it alleviate the problem bilaterally.

Groups of countries are proving no more adept. The raging debate over austerity or growth has prevented the emergence of a strong enough collective response to halt the crisis, and this has only heightened Greece’s power, at least in relative terms a: sort of “divide and conquer” result without the effort.

Military strength - regardless of how substantial or modern - offers exposed countries no protection in this situation. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, defence spending last year was around US $711 billion in the United States, US $58 billion in Great Britain, US $58 billion in France and US$43 billion in Germany.

Greece, however, spent less than US $8 billion, and yet it is causing all the others to take reactive stances to defend themselves from the damage its decisions can inflict.

In effect, Greece has more control over what happens elsewhere in the world than it has had in more than a millennium. Whether and how this is channelled into seeking economic or political concessions from other nations will depend on the will and the skill of Greek leaders. If they succeed, they may alleviate some of the economic pain being felt by the Greek population.

Yet there is an ominous irony: Greece would see its influence erode if its financial situation was to improve. In other words, recovering financially would make Greece weaker geo-politically. This could tempt Greece to retain a degree of financial weakness - to the extent it is tolerated by the Greek population and by countries that may, of course, be able to apply pressure by other means.

What makes the euro crisis enlightening is how clearly it reveals the evolving nature of state power. Military strength isn’t out, but it’s certainly not alone as a source of global authority. Eventually, it may no longer be the dominant one...

Greece has shown how the route to geo-political power is open to any country - large or small, prosperous or poor - that attracts others to become tied to it in financial or other ways. Globalization makes this possible, and can allow it to happen rapidly and with modest financial resources.

It may take other cases - accidental or intentional -to understand more fully what is involved here. One lesson from Greece is that the process can entail domestic risks: greater potential influence abroad may be at the cost of internal instability.

Nations tend to pursue their interests with the means they have available. The more we know about how state power accumulates and deteriorates, the more this understanding is applied by governments. The euro crisis, as shown by Greece, has demonstrated how financial liabilities can be an asset in this regard.

(Photo © DR)

(Opinions voiced by Global Minds do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Global Journal.)

Greed and the Bomb: How the Global Financial Crisis Diminishes the Nuclear Threat

2012-02-07T13:54:03Z

Throughout the four years of the global financial crisis, nobody has spoken up in favor of greedy bankers or big bonuses for executives of failing financial institutions. It’s about time someone did. Here’s why:

Bankers who might seem despicable at first glance may have done the world a huge favor by bringing their institutions to the point of financial ruin and dragging companies, jobs, and governments along for the ride. Because the crisis triggered by their reckless speculating has created a cornucopia of investment opportunities for China, which has greatly expanded its economic participation throughout the world as a consequence. By taking part in bailing out companies and countries, China is fast becoming a stakeholder in the business and financial infrastructure on all continents.

This does, of course, give China the benefit of more influence, which has its own implications. And it is likely to make China the big winner when the financial crisis is over and global economic growth rebounds. But already today, its investments are increasing China’s exposure to things that go wrong elsewhere. China’s own economy becomes more vulnerable to major disruptions in others – a recession, a hurricane, a tsunami, a revolution, a war, or something diabolical like the detonation of a nuclear bomb in another country’s capital city or in its financial or industrial heart.

And that’s the surprising upside of the global crisis. China, which has spent billions over decades to build up a formidable nuclear arsenal, is eliminating all its potential targets. By investing in them, China assumes a responsibility to itself to make sure they do well, or at least that they don’t get destroyed. The financial and commercial fallout from using an atomic bomb in New York or London or Tel Aviv could be devastating for Beijing and Shanghai. The quality that makes a country important enough to be a potential target for nuclear weapons also makes it attractive for investments: its strategic or economic significance. Wherever that’s the case, China is probably there already.

Investing abroad also heightens the importance to Beijing that nobody else should get the idea of bombing those places either. After all, the impact on China would be the same regardless of which country’s name is painted on the bomb. Whether China has recognized this or not, the broadening and deepening of its financial role in the world have given it a greater interest in making sure nuclear weapons aren’t used by anyone, anywhere. It could even turn China into an activist.

Even if that doesn’t happen, the world can still benefit. China’s case illustrates that when a nuclear power becomes increasingly integrated into the economies of other countries, it renders its own nuclear arsenal less useful. This realization can provoke some interesting thinking about how the world is trying to contain nuclear proliferation. For example, might it be possible to bring the nuclear efforts of Iran or North Korea to a halt by actively courting their investments and broadening business ties with them, rather than by imposing sanctions that shut them out? In theory, it seems logical. In reality, which is the more complex - who knows?

If the global financial crisis produces new geopolitical situations, or leads to policy choices that can blunt the spread of nuclear weapons and make the ones in existence no longer worth having, perhaps some of the suffering in the interim will have been worth it. We’ll see. It seems a bit early to thank greedy bankers for setting off a chain of events that can diminish the global nuclear threat, but maybe one day we’ll decide their bonuses were too small.

All Change? Military Spending Bill Signals US U-Turn on Human Rights

2011-12-19T12:00:46Z

Year after year, the U.S. State Department issues an annual report that criticizes the Cuban government for detaining some of its citizens in prison indefinitely, without charging them with crimes or bringing them to trial.

But let's be fair. This criticism applies only to a specific part of Cuba - the 99.9% of the island that is under the control of the Cuban government. It doesn't apply to the 0.1% of Cuban sovereign territory that is under the control of the United States - Guantanamo Bay - where, for the last decade, the U.S. government has been detaining people in prison indefinitely, without charging them with crimes or bringing them to trial.

The existing prisoners at Guantanamo are non-Americans who are suspected of being terrorists or of aiding terrorists, although some probably did little more than watch movies about terrorists or look up the word "terrorist" in a dictionary. Now, the 2012 U.S. military spending bill that is poised to become law will let Washington expand the profile of prisoners to include U.S. citizens arrested within the United States who have some presumed connection with terrorism.

If the United States believes Cuba is violating human rights by detaining people without charge or trial, it can only be for one reason: Washington considers the imprisoned Cubans to be human beings with a fundamental right to not be treated this way. So, if the United States does not believe it violates human rights itself when it treats people that way at Guantanamo, what are we supposed to conclude? That the prisoners there don't have the same fundamental right? That they are something other than human?

If this seems absurd, look at it another way: the U.S. government is giving itself the legal authority to abandon the application of human rights law on the basis of what a person is, and to apply it instead on the basis of what a person does. Or - more accurately - on the basis of what a person is suspected of doing, which actually may never be known if the person is not charged or tried.

This suspicion will necessarily come from the security and law enforcement officials who handle the cases that result in people being sent to Guantanamo as presumed terrorists. Thus, it may fall to a relatively small number of people - each with a personal mix of professionalism, ethics, beliefs, and perspectives - to assess the evidence and determine whether or not an individual is covered by human rights law.

This signals a major turning point in the way human rights are perceived by a nation that has set itself up as an international arbiter of them. It signals that the rules of the game are changing.

The universality of human rights - the fact that everyone has them simply by existing - may be on the verge of being rolled back from the way the United States and other nations saw it 63 years ago, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights set in motion an expanding framework of global conventions that have protected the lives and conditions of people to this day.

It was another U.S. military spending bill - the one for 1902 - that led to the lease agreement with Cuba that gave the United States jurisdictional rights at Guantanamo Bay. Because of the territory's unusual legal status, it has been a laboratory for human rights and other laws ever since. The new law is bound to reaffirm Guantanamo's role in this respect by generating new legal challenges, and these may well steer the direction of human rights concepts in the years ahead.

Turkey’s Illuminating Threat to Turn Off Syria's Lights

2011-11-18T10:50:10Z

Turkey's threat to cut electricity exports to Syria, part of an effort to pressure the Syrian government to halt its deadly attacks on protestors, illuminates a hidden dynamic of international relations: how aspects of control over territory, at least in a day-to-day operational sense, can quietly slip from one country to another.

Services that collectively allow a nation to function - power, transportation, water, and the like - are often provided today by entities located in other countries. This is the result of two simultaneous trends, privatization and globalization.

If Country A performs enough critical activities in Country B, it could be said to have assumed a degree of control over what happens on Country B's territory without any military or other intervention. As Syria may find to its detriment, aspects of operational control may pass from one country to another when relations are good, and this situation may stay benign for an extended period, but if relations deteriorate it offers the country that has the control a new path for exerting diplomatic pressure.

The implications of this are more than academic. Companies in France, for example, have assumed considerable operational control over services that are essential to keeping the United Kingdom operating. And because France has been reticent to privatize the very activities that Great Britain was quick to sell off, this operational control has an underlying political aspect.

Companies in which the French state has full ownership, controlling interest, or influence through a substantial shareholding are among the largest providers of electric power, telecommunications, passenger rail transportation, and waste collection and treatment in the United Kingdom. What makes this a potentially potent factor in bilateral relations is that Great Britain doesn't have reciprocal clout.

It's hard to imagine in today's context that Paris will ever threaten to pull the plug on London. But if future political differences create tensions, or even if the two countries simply oppose each other on a European Union policy matter that both consider of paramount importance, France has the upper hand with this particular pressure option: it can disrupt the lives of British people and the functioning of the British economy, but the United Kingdom can't do the same to France.

To the extent that the British government is aware of this - it's never said anything about it, so we don't know - the imbalance might be sufficient to act as an unspoken form of influence that France has over the United Kingdom in a more general sense. Certainly for France's overall strength in the world, it provides a strategic justification for continued resistance to the privatization of state activities.

Of course, there's a safety valve: France can't exercise this type of pressure against Great Britain without consequences, since the United Kingdom has other strengths at its disposal. But that may not be the case with Turkey's threat to Syria, and it may not be the case elsewhere.

Would Greece Benefit by Ceding Control over Some of its Territory?

2011-10-05T11:52:24Z

The idea of Greece selling some islands to alleviate its debt problem was quickly dismissed when it was proposed last year, before any serious analysis or public debate could occur. Yet on reflection, the idea of transferring a small bit of Greek territory to another country by sale or lease might actually have merit.

The aim would be to shore up Greece’s finances and let it reform its debts less abruptly and painfully, cushioning the shock for its economy and reducing prospects for social unrest. Rather than diminishing Greece as a nation, selling or leasing territory could actually boost its geopolitical strength and influence.

The sale of territorial assets is nothing new. It simply hasn’t been done lately, but it remains an acceptable practice under international law. Examples are scattered throughout the history of nations that are alive and flourishing today – perhaps in part because they did this at a critical moment: Russia sold Alaska. Mexico sold part of its north. Denmark sold its Caribbean islands. Spain sold the Carolines. And France sold Louisiana – twice (first to Spain, which returned it, then to the United States). The motivations varied, but some sellers had an urgent need for money, as France did when it ceded Louisiana the second time.

Territorial leases, by contrast, still occur, and recent cases show the value of territory soaring to heights that can readily diminish a lessor’s financial woes. Last year, Russia renewed the lease on a naval port at Sevastopol, Ukraine, for €30 billion in financial concessions over 25 years. That’s more than 10 times the previous rent.

Nations are never static. Their populations and economies grow and shrink. So do the dimensions of their territory, through war, sale, lease, grants of independence and even forces of nature. Some nations cease existing, and new ones get created. And the process is still going strong. Many countries around today didn’t exist 25 years ago. South Sudan didn’t even exist 25 months ago.

As for Greece, it has a large stock of islands in the Aegean Sea. Hundreds of them are uninhabited, and some of these may be sold or leased without directly impacting the Greek population.

Many of the islands have strategic value. Tensions with Turkey over their maritime border show (albeit awkwardly) that there’s a market for them. And Turkey may not be the only one. China might desire a Mediterranean foothold. Israel, having fallen out with Turkey, might want stronger ties with Greece through a physical presence. Even non-state actors could get involved. Or billionaires who want to start their own countries.

Holding on to a given island must be weighed against the strategic benefits that Greece might gain from ceding control, such as increased clout. Even just hinting at a sale or lease might be enough to strengthen Greece’s hand in its international dealings: the prospect of a Chinese outpost in the Mediterranean would surely spur Europe into faster and bolder aid.

Selling or leasing territory can also put an outpost of a strong economy into the midst of a weaker one and provide long-term benefits to it. A reluctant China was pushed into leasing Hong Kong to Great Britain – but could its economic power today be as strong as it is without having done that? And would Panama be as dynamic without the canal the U.S. left behind at the end of its lease?