Coming to America

Globalisation has been a problematic in political discourse for two decades now, largely centred on its attendant inequality and environmental damage, but the coincidence of the Covid-19 pandemic and the fracturing of US-China relations have together now brought the dimension of geopolitics and security to the fore as well. We can see this not only in talk of a revived "Cold War" but in the idea that a government's first duty is the protection of the people, even if many politicians chafe at the idea and would rather prioritise the economy. This has even prompted astonishment in some quarters. Anthony Barnett expressed this well in his latest openDemocracy blockbuster, 'Out of the Belly of Hell': "The real surprise is not that there is a financial crash ... It is that governments themselves brought it about by deliberate acts of policy. A previously inconceivable collapse of commerce was caused by politically ordered lockdowns. ... Why did it happen? ... All of us believed that market values ruled and democracy had been hollowed out, or captured by authoritarians. We were all wrong".

Of course, we have not seen a "collapse of commerce". There is a great deal of ruin in a nation and technological progress means there is probably more scope for it with every year that passes. What we have seen is evidence of the economy's resilience and (what is effectively the same thing) its inefficiency - i.e. the redundancy of many office-based roles, the predominance of distributive over productive activities, and the inequity of economic returns (this time focused on the poor pay and conditions of "key workers"). To believe that the system puts profits before people does not require you to also believe that politicians are blind to public opinion when they depend on democratic election. There is no contradiction between the two. Even if you imagine the political response to have been a cynical attempt to preserve labour for the future benefit of capital, it is surely more likely that the government would adopt a "humanist" response to the pandemic. The point about the evils of capitalism is that they are systemic. They do not arise from evil men doing evil things but rather from the butcher and the baker feeling obliged to pursue their self-interest.

Barnett's incredulity allows him to suggest that what we thought we understood about globalisation is wrong, or at least seriously incomplete. He isn't suggesting any significant change to the economic or social analysis of globalisation, or the ideology of neoliberalism, but he is suggesting that the last half-century saw a simultaneous counter-movement: "Accompanying and related to the inhuman progress of the market, with all its insecurities, booms, busts, precariousness and refusal of responsibility, there has been a parallel process of humanisation". The mechanisms for this remain sketchy: "Today the human consequences of globalisation are part of our experience as well as knowledge. People everywhere feel we share the same planet earth at the same time as each other. ... This is an economic, social and political revolution. An immense improvement in the standard of life has created a generalised capacity to become citizens everywhere ... sweeping educational, sanitary and technological transformations have laid the basis for people to become fully human and this has blown away neoliberalism".

This is a liberal humanism that imagines a global public, forged by mobile phones and the exigencies of lockdown, and now entrusted with the historic mission of superseding the neoliberal order. Barnett historicises this by excavating the roots of our shared experience: "Globalisation in this sense and as we know it today began in 1968. The impact of the Vietnamese Tet offensive in January, the French barricades of May, and the Prague Spring that brought the Soviet Tanks into what was then Czechoslovakia, were high points in a whole series of challenges that altered the nature of what was possible. They were unexpected, unpredictable, popular uprisings against the established orders and expressed a far-reaching social transformation, one that had developed through a decade which had already seen the liberation of most African countries from colonisation. It would prove to be revolutionary, although not in the way that the rhetoric of the time foresaw. It was the start of our contemporary globalisation, as it became clear that processes had been unleashed that had escaped the control of those supposedly in charge as well as the confinement to any single continent".

1968 did not mark a "time of liberation" but the triumph of individualism and the restoration of order. These two were not in conflict. Indeed the combination was the ideological launchpad for neoliberalism. That is why a "left-wing moment", as Barnett puts it (if you ignore the often cool response of actual workers at the time), could lead to "five decades of right-wing domination". The Tet offensive led to US disenchantment but public opinion was already swinging against the war in Vietnam; les evenements in France led to the electoral success of the Gaullists later in the year; and the Prague Spring was crushed, marking the start of the era of stagnation in Eastern Europe. Barnett remains optimistic: "For sure, the pandemic is already generating an eruption of reaction designed to strengthen corporate capitalism. At the same time I believe it is going to initiate a long, progressive, democratic and ecological transformation. We are witnessing the force that will achieve this in the upwelling of solidarity that has been released in cities, towns, communities and networks, in response to the lockdowns and in support of frontline workers around the world". You can't fault his positivity.

My scepticism isn't about the idea that neoliberalism and globalisation have generated their own resistance. Whether you describe it as a counter movement in the language of Polanyi or a dialectic in the language of Marx it is clear that there has been a consistent social reaction that runs like a thread from the Upper Clyde work-in to the Occupy movement. But that reaction has rarely been politically successful and, as we're seeing with the UK Labour party right now, has tended to provoke an even fiercer and unforgiving reaction by the establishment. Barnett's belief that this time is different, that the lockdown and sympathy for frontline workers will lead to a transformation, strikes me as naive to the point of delusional. I also can't help thinking there is an element of displacement at work here, that the disappointments of Brexit and Trump can somehow be overcome through global solidarity, even though both are themselves credible examples of a reaction against globalisation, specifically the impact that trade with China (among others) has had on traditionally well-paid manufacturing jobs in electorally pivotal areas such as the American "rust-belt" and England's "red wall".

A more insightful take on the history and prospects of globalisation is provided in the LRB by Adam Tooze, in a review of a number of new works that look in particular at US-China relations. The first point he makes is that "Economic growth powered by globalisation was geopolitically innocent", though it's important to note that this "innocence" depended on US hegemony and in the event only lasted for a period of less than twenty years: "One of the effects of America’s unipolar dominance in the wake of the Cold War was that it permitted a clean line to be drawn between economic and security policy. ... In the best case, as liberals hoped, economic development would produce political and legal convergence. ... And if it didn’t, it couldn’t cause any real harm because America’s military and economic predominance were so overwhelming". By 2008, this was clearly not going to plan. China was not liberalising politically, its supression of wages and encouragement of saving was creating a huge trade imbalance with the US, and it wasn't content to limit its industry to low-value outsourcing but sought to compete at the highest levels (e.g. Huawei).

Tooze's second point is that "The mistake in thinking that we are in a ‘new Cold War’ is in thinking of it as new". This isn't the least of his heresies: "For Americans, part of the appeal of allusions to Cold War 2.0 is that they think they know how the first one ended. Yet our certainty on that point is precisely what the rise of China ought to put in question. The simple fact is that the US did not prevail in the Cold War in Asia. Korea was divided by a stalemate. Vietnam was a humiliating failure. It was to find a way out of that debacle that Nixon and Kissinger turned to Beijing and inaugurated a new era of Sino-American relations. America’s ability to tilt the balance against the Soviet Union was linked to its success in playing the Chinese off against the Soviets". History alone should give the US pause for thought in prosecuting a Cold War in Asia, but so should the inter-penetration of the American and Chinese economies. As Tooze puts it, "we have learned, or relearned, that economic growth and trade determine the balance of power and generate tensions that ultimately require international political resolution. The new détente must, therefore, directly address issues of geopolitics and security".

To put this another way, the Cold War ended in Europe shortly after 1968. It was replaced with the era of détente, whose key dynamic was not arms limitation but the growing inter-connection of the economies of the USSR and its satellites with the West. The fall of Soviet communism in 1989 was the result not of popular dissatisfaction (that was merely a symptom), or of a crisis of confidence among the leadership (ditto), but of trade imbalances, fluctuating oil and gas prices, and the financial ramifications of the ending of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. Meanwhile in Asia, China's embrace of the capitalist road in 1979 showed not only that the market did not inevitably spread democracy and "liberty", but that neoliberalism was no threat to authoritarian regimes (something that had already been made clear in Chile). We are now in a new era of détente where Cold War theatre has been revived to provide a nationalist safety-valve for popular anxieties that originate in the neoliberal order. Against this, Barnett's belief in an emerging global consciousness and solidarity will struggle in vain. The tune of public safety is likely to be played in a martial rather than a pacific register.

How might this détente evolve? Under Trump, the (still) global hegemon has rejected multilaterism for unilateralism, strong-arming its allies and pursuing the chimera of bilateral deals from Palestine to North Korea. The tone may change with a Biden presidency, but the dynamic probably won't. European states will be expected to fall in line, and the UK in particular will be expected to show willing, lacking as it now does the excuse of EU consensus. The current call for a more robust British response to Russia is little more than cosplay between two marginal powers that have both seen better days, but the decision to freeze-out Huawei marks a significant step towards the UK's trading relations being dictated by Washington. The issue here is not a coercive agreement that inundates us with dodgy chickens but the likelihood that the US will want to incorporate the UK more fully into its own economy in order to butress its position relative to China. The irony is that we may end up with tighter economic integration in twenty years with the US than we ever had with the EU.