Going Deeper
Avoiding the burden of conflict
ONE wonders whether the end of the cold war has truly brought about a change in the world system that can claim that the peace Immanuel Kant had dreamt of, or a society devoid of inequity between the rich and the poor that Marx and Engels had thought about, could be realised.
If the Greek, the Roman and the ancient Egyptian civilisations prospered on slave labour, as claimed by some theorists, then the American civilisation of the deep South till the civil war was no less a product of slave labour. Indeed, the whole period of colonialism based on metropolitan-periphery relationship in which the white man's burden voluntarily sought out by the colonials did introduce the colonies to some of the fruits of modernity, both material and in arts and culture (though Edward Said termed the Orient as the cultural contestant West), but at the same time robbed the colonies of their riches that ornamented the metropolis.
The subalterns did revolt from time to time, though in vain, against the injustices imposed upon them by the colonial masters, but failed because the weapons of conquests used by the intruders were much superior to the ones then possessed by those defeated and later occupied. It is difficult to believe that things have changed in any fundamental way from the time of the bygone days, because the North continues to dominate the South as it had for centuries.
Despite skepticism, the dependency theory would be applicable in trade relations between many developing and developed countries as the exporting developing countries with small export baskets find that the control of trade, insurance, banking and port facilities passing to foreigners who are often associated with local elites.
These economies suffer from adverse terms of trade, the exportable being mostly primary products, and imports that are costly in dollar terms, more so if the exporting developing countries resort to devaluation coupled with inelastic demand for their exports. The resulting deterioration in their industrial sector pushes the labour involved in the primary and intermediate industries into the subsistence sector.
A lot is being said about the garment export of Bangladesh that ranks as the second foreign exchange earner. In our euphoria, we tend to forget that the income received from tailoring, and now for some accessories associated with the RMG sector, the value added amount is not that significant and the sector remains vulnerable.
The European Union's allowance given to the LDCs under the slogan "all but arms," giving zero duty to our readymade garments and other exportables as a LDC country is very beneficial to us. But the US stance taken in the WTO Hong Kong round of talks, terming Bangladeshi garment sector as globally competitive, and its refusal to grant zero duty to our RMG export is discouraging.
One hopes that, though foreign aid receives practically no importance in presidential primaries and elections the American voters, given a possible trillion dollars expenditure in Iraq as atonement for Bush's folly and his strident advocacy for democratic reform in Muslim countries to confront the Islamic extremists, will ask for an account from the administration as to why the Defense Department gets more than $400 billion dollars as against less than $ 50 billion for the State Department reflecting Bush administration's prioritisation of utilizing soft power including foreign assistance as against hard power.
Besides, the developing world, having unified under the banner of "trade and not aid," is now insisting on "concessions" (if they can be so called) from the developed world in the WTO negotiations on non-reciprocal basis. It is generally agreed that globalisation has become an irreversible process, with unequal distribution of benefits.
Unfortunately, in the real world, writes Dennis O'Hearn, "transition to (or intensification of) globalisation has made access to, and control over, technologies and resources more unequal than ever. The rise of supranational global institutions and market oriented global networks has increased the power of core capitals to subjugate the peripheral regions in the age of 'post-modernism' and 'post-developmentalism.'
If we hope to achieve socialisation of the economy, that is demarginalisation of what has not been valued in orthodox economics, we still require an understanding of how a small minority of people within a minority of regions of the world control the vast majority of material resources and technologies (Tigers and Transnational Corporations)."
This is not only in the bread and butter issues but in socio-political issues as well, albeit it is difficult to separate the Siamese twins, that the developing countries have to remain alert in safe guarding their interests because, as Ziauddin Sardar feels, the Euro-centric idea of a nation state has played havoc with non-Western societies by targeting, for example, Islam as an "enemy" though the faith is intrinsically universal, breaking all barriers of colour, creed and language.
But then, a counter argument had been advanced by Tony Blair that Christians fought for the Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo against Christian Serbs. But the opposition to Turkey's entry into the European Union by eminent politicians and the general people because, in that case, Muslim Turkey would become a heavy weight in the EU decision making process, testifies once again to historian Bernard Lewis' remarks about eternal conflict between Christianity and Islam as the latter does not decree "give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's."
One would, therefore, to his peril, dismiss Samuel Huntington's thesis that future conflicts between civilisations could also be along religious lines because the Gareth Evans chaired International Conference on Intervention that contributed to a change in the concept of sovereignty from being illimitable and un-encroachable to one that puts the responsibility to prevent large scale violation of human rights on the government of the day in order to retain sovereignty that hangs like the sword of Democles over aberrant nations that incidentally are constitutive of some developing nations.
Perhaps, from the inner most recess of the Western mind Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant, giving "advanced" nations responsibility of putting under their tutelage the people "not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world … as a sacred trust of civilization" has not totally been eliminated.
But, then again, sociologist Vincent Tucker's criticism of the West that "for a society to claim universal desirability, while turning its back from others from which it is convinced it has nothing to learn is not only cultural elitism but also cultural racism" reminds one of the significant inroads made by the social movements from the Third World, e.g. the non-violent movement against the British launched by Mahatma Gandhi, and by Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela for freedom from minority rule and social injustice.
In Bangladesh, we are on a quest for elections to correct an aberration that was pushing the country to the brink of civil war and state failure to a state that would hopefully provide a crop of politicians more dedicated to serving the people.
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