War and Peace and Money

On this Memorial Day, it’s well to remember that one of the darker talents of humanity is how good we are at killing each other.  That’s a claim never made for meadow larks.  Looking back over the grim statistics of history, one sees that the Chinese civil wars of the 1^st through 8^th centuries C.E. top the list with total death tolls, including disease and famine, estimated at well over 130 million.  That’s almost matched by the combined deaths from the wars of the 20^th century, with estimates of over 100 million.  Those were peaks, when we were at the top of our form, though other centuries show we were no slouches even on a day off.  The 30 Years War, even though it involved casualties of only about 11 million, managed to reduce populations in parts of Germany by about 75 percent.  The first decade of the 21^st century has seen less than 200,000 casualties of war, but we’re working at it.

Further examination of history reveals interesting patterns in our rampages.  David Rothkopf, in Power, Inc., reports these trends: the 16^th century C.E. included 34 wars between major powers, the 18^th included 17 such wars, and the 20^th included 15. He also reports a decline in the average duration of wars from 1.6 years down to .4 years and an increase in periods of no active major wars from 5 percent up to 47 percent.  Our wars are becoming less frequent, shorter and more violent.  They also have become much more expensive.

It’s tempting to cite Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex at this point, but the credit or blame goes back to Napoleon.  When Gustavus Adolphus and the Swedish army became the decisive factor in the resolution of the 30 Years War, he had done it with 73,000 troops, of whom 30,000 were mercenaries, and with cheap muskets.  150 years later, Napoleon accomplished his conquests of Europe with a universal draft mustering about 1 million troops, with an equally elaborate military infrastructure,  and with cannon.  That was the birth of modern warfare, with its huge armies and complex weaponry, all of which are expensive.  The estimates are that the U.S. has spent between one and two trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past ten years, an amount critics have noted that about equals the federal deficit.  As Rothkopf notes, the expense of war has priced all but a few major nations out of the market.  That in turn produces effects that reach beyond war itself.

For one, the ability to project coercive force has always been perceived as a defining power of sovereignty.  States with no army to speak of are not regarded as major, no matter how prosperous or well run.  The defining measure of military power these days is nuclear weaponry, and of about 190 countries in the world today, only about 9 are thought to be nuclear. Somehow, the rest don’t seem to count.  But such countries do count, as they always have, and their presence is now projected by alliances of all sorts, from the U.N. and NATO to NAFTA, SEATO and beyond.  These alliances in turn hasten the growth of international law and behavioral norms promoting peaceful resolution of issues.  And as sovereign authority is more and more exercised by unions and alliances, it is in the process transferring  from military to other sovereign issues.  A big part of the European debt controversy involves the tension between EU sovereignty and that of its constituent members over economic policy.

Second, the expense of war is more and more being used as a political weapon itself.  Ronald Reagan vowed to break the wallet of the Soviet Union through his Star Wars Program, and perhaps he did.  In the U.S., conservatives have sought to cut social program spending by not paying for war expenses though increased tax revenue, thereby creating politically explosive deficits.   Through history, political rhetoric to the contrary, most national deficits have been created by the expense of war, not the costs of the domestic economy, and have been paid for through tax revenue increases.

Third, the economic expense of war consists largely of huge transfer payments from the government to private corporations in the form of bewildering varieties of defense contracts.  This in turns enables these corporations, Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex”, to spend millions each year in lobbying for policies that further enhance their incomes, at the expense of national interests.  Results of this include such things as the cost of weaponry climbing a steady 6 percent annually, while the rest of the economy is in recession.

More importantly, our obsession with improving our skills at killing each other drains energy and resources from our abilities to work together to evolve the planet to a more peaceful place.  The costs of war have been a boon that has generated the growth of alliances among people, and has hastened the development of international norms of more peaceful behavior.  It is time to promote those, and not war itself.  We no longer can afford otherwise.

Sovereignty and the Future

A long-ago teacher of mine, a distinguished historian of the English Renaissance, liked to say that the Middle Ages ended in England at 2:30pm on April 9,1434 (or thereabouts – I’m vague on dates).  That was when Parliament ruled that acts of piracy committed on the high seas by priests should be tried under civil rather than canon law.  By that act, Parliament had redefined English sovereignty to exclude the powers of the Church, transforming English sovereignty from a subdivision of the universal sovereignty of the Church to a strictly territorial claim of supreme jurisdiction over the British Isles. Before then, a Holy Roman Emperor crawled through the snow at Canossa to be pardoned by the Pope, England was put under Papal Interdict for the slaying of Thomas Becket, and the Church decided whether it or the civil authorities should try cases.  My teacher’s observation was perhaps the only reference I heard over many courses to the real nature of sovereignty.

Back then, topics like sovereignty, or sovereign state were never actually discussed.   I’ve found out since then that it’s because no one seems to understand or agree about what they really mean.  They are an amorphous cloud that shifts and changes over time. A medieval king shared territory with his barons and had no exclusive control of it. He was in some ways subordinate to the church, in other ways its co-equal, and often its rival.  He enforced not just laws, but customs also.  His face was on coinage and the face changed with each new king.  He was not sovereign in the way we think of it now, and even today, U.S. sovereignty as defined under the Constitution is not the same sovereignty enjoyed by a Saudi monarch, who remains subject to Sharia, not secular law.  China routinely exiles dissidents, a sovereign power specifically rejected in our Constitution.  So the next time a senator gets up and goes on about some proposal violating our sovereign rights, for example the Kyoto Treaty or The Law of the Seas or the International Criminal Court, ask him (if only you could) just what he means.  It might prove interesting.

Sovereignty involves of course the question of just who is in charge of the whole mess and responsible for fixing it, or at least major parts of it. I’ve been interested in it lately as I ponder the shifting responsibilities of governments, alliances, corporations and just ordinary people to make the world a little better place.  We are rapidly transforming the planet through globalization of commerce, instant communication, international terrorism, global climate change, migration, etc., into a place that could not be recognized by our grandparents.  One of the hazards we face with such rapid change is unplanned entrenchment of notions, practices, institutions, infrastructure, etc., that inhibit our futures and the futures of our own grandchildren.  

An idea being circulated these days is the obsolescence of the sovereign state, e.g., the U.S. or Russia or Germany, as something no longer able to cope with the complexities of a truly global environment. The proposition is that its powers are rapidly being eroded away until the nation state as we knew it becomes at best only a puppet for institutions newly evolving from international bodies, multi-national corporations, etc.  Of course that raises the question of erosion versus natural evolution of functions as times change.  When I was growing up, they used to grumble that the United Nations was going to take over everything.  The erosion of sovereignty idea is a lot like that, only a lot more sophisticated, and possibly a lot truer.  And if sovereign states do fade into unimportance, what will replace them?  They provide a territorial base for provision of goods and services that we collectively call government.  Their historical importance has been as protector and nurturer of individuals in a world that otherwise sees them only for their utilitarian value, and as enablers for the voice of the individual to be heard.  The policy-making decision process now seems ground to a halt by continuing partisan impasse, we are relying more and more on the power of non-territorial social networks to make ourselves heard, and governments are contracting out goods and services to private corporations.  If that’s our future, will our grandchildren be better off for it?

So then, what are those sovereign powers being eroded away, and how does it happen?  Bear with me on this, for I’m organizing myself for a trek that will lead directly to issues like European debt, and what to do about climate change and other less abstract topics, in subsequent posts.  After searching vainly for one on the net, I’ve cobbled together the following list.  I believe all sovereign powers, past and present,  can be found under this list, but if there’s one I missed, let me know. 

SOVEREIGN POWERS

Legitimate (i.e., recognized) and exclusive right to:

Acquire and hold territory subject to exclusive jurisdiction

Control access to its territory via immigration, emigration and exile

Exercise coercive force including execution,  for defense and police

Establish rules for citizenship and personhood.

Make rules, laws and regulations superior to those of any subdivision

Enter into agreements with other sovereign states or declare war with them

Appoint representatives of the sovereign authority and delegate limited powers to them

Coin, regulate the value and require use of money (“legal tender”)

Provide for and regulate shared facilities for transportation and communication

Regulate commerce internally and with other sovereign states

Secure the natural, legal and customary rights of persons and citizens subject to the sovereign authority

Exercise inherent powers required for carrying out listed powers (e.g., collection of revenue).

Note that under my definition, sovereignty responsibility includes things like promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty to the extent they are recognized as the rights of persons or citizens. That’s a heritage of our western European culture not necessarily found in other parts of the world, before now.  That’s why nations like Syria or Afghanistan seem to us to be failing in their responsibilities; they don’t have the same concept of the rights of the individual as ours.  A law protecting the rights of women is not going to happen until there is a societal sense that women have rights which must be respected; heresy and dissent are punishable crimes so long as there is a societal belief that error has no rights.  Part of the chaos on the international scene from things like the Arab spring and the occupy movements arises from the introduction via international communications of new ideas about rights into societies without the sovereign structures to support them.  A new concept, the responsibility to protect, the basis for United Nations actions against Libya and Syria, implies a right of citizens to be protected against excessive exercise of sovereign power; that right is still not accepted as legitimate by nations like China and Russia, so there is no law against use of excessive force.

My belief is that many of the current crises around the world, from European debt to third world starvation to international terrorism, have as a root cause either the erosion of sovereignty or the inadequacies of traditional sovereignty to handle complex changes in the global world.  That is, our concepts of the location and powers and responsibilities of so called sovereign authority are outdated and must be redefined for a global age.  Otherwise, we throw up our hands and feel powerless to find solutions.  Solutions of global issues will require a better understanding of just who is responsible for what.  Subsequent posts will include my little attempts to contribute to the process by looking at the crises through the lens of sovereign powers and responsibilities, focusing on just a few of them that, in my view,  have special weight in our current global environment.

Communicating Change

Two years ago, my grandson was just returned from a summer course in international politics.  As grandpas do, I asked him about the most significant things he had learned; his response was “that anywhere you look around the world, there’s a problem.”  I congratulated him on getting to the point of foreign policy studies so quickly.  His insight seems particularly appropriate these days, as we follow daily the evolving crises from Europe to Syria to Afghanistan to the arctic to China, to right here in America.  There are, in fact, problems everywhere.  When you look at the whole picture and not just the individual crisis areas, two possibilities emerge; either something is happening of a global nature, or nothing at all.

The “nothing at all” alternative is a recognition like that obtained by my grandson, that there are always problems everywhere and that, perhaps, the real change is that global instant communications makes us aware of them all as never before.  It defines the problem as essentially one of foreign policy information overload.  A solution to that problem is to creep back into your shell and ignore it all.  I wish I could be comfortable with that analysis, but I can’t.  To paraphrase the apocryphal comment by the cowboy at his first sight of the Grand Canyon, something big is happening here.

Changes are occurring at a global level, from the potential fragmentation of the EU to the potential exploitation, for better or worse, of the arctic, to the potential seismic shift in the internal politics of China.  Again, part of the issue is instant global communications, and along with that is the growing global perception of the need to redefine capitalism for a new century.  And they are both the problem and the solution.

Communications are rapid and universal as never before.  I read on the internet of a Chinese dissident’s arrival in the U.S. as his plane is touching down; conversations of world leaders over the European debt crisis are reported as they occur; and the casualty counts in Syria and Afghanistan are daily numbers in the newspapers.  Public media now shape events “in real time.”  They are both a distraction to leaders seeking to look past instant politics to short and long term solutions to real problems, and increasingly, a tool for their resolution.

I read today, in the Washington Post, two opinion columns by writers at the opposite ends of the political spectrum who, looking past the polemical language common to all opinion writers, are agreeing on both the fundamentals of the issue regarding the redefinition of capitalism, and on the alternative choices to be made.  Even six months ago, they could not have spoken such common language.  Other articles reflect similar changes in perceptions of issues ranging from relations with China to campaign finance.  The accumulation of EU debt crisis bulletins, U.S. political news, Arab springs, occupy everywhere reports, etc., available daily, has created a growing trend toward consensus in American political thought about the valid definition of issues.  That’s a long way from resolutions, but a good step forward.

The capitalism alternatives being talked about now at either end of the spectrum may be tagged “creative destruction” versus “social market.”  It is noteworthy that “creative destruction” is an American term preferred by conservatives, while “social market” is a German term preferred by liberals.  Both terms imply that capitalism, international and domestic, in its traditional form, is flawed and needs some kind of reform.  Both recognize that human suffering occurs as a side effect of free market operations.  There’s agreement also on facts like the declining share of income for labor versus capital. That’s not agreement enough by itself to resolve the issues between sharply conflicting points of view, but it’s a start.  And both recognize that changes will occur as a result of political choices being argued and fought out around the world, and will come from the individual choices of real people.  The devil will be in the details of any changes that come about, and there's real risk that superficial solutions will be reached that don't address the fundamental issues of how to change the rules of markets behavior to alleviate the disparities and suffering they produce.  But it 's just possible that “We, the people” is becoming not only a neglected American phrase.  My hope is that in the 21^st century it will echo around the world.

Responsible Ownership

“They are capable of shutting off the sun and stars because they yield no dividend.”  Eighty years ago John Maynard Keynes pinpointed the fundamental issues at work in the current Euro crisis.  In his great essay, “National Self-sufficiency”, he pointed out that laissez faire economic principles carried over from the 19^th century were incompatible with the international financial operations emerging in the 20^th century, because they divorce financial control from the responsibilities of ownership. Applying “pure” free market principles of profit optimization to far-away peoples and places causes us to prefer building slums over alabaster cities in order to make more profit.  We tear down mountains to mine the coal underneath if we do not have to look out the window each day at the wrecked lives and forests left behind.  We blow up underground shale deposits to get at the natural gas unless we have to drink the poisoned water. And we destroy the economies, cultures and people of other countries to assure a maximum return on our investment.

One of the great assets, as I’ve mentioned, of multi-national corporations is their portability.  The corporate bankers from all over Europe who are discussing whether keeping Greece in the Euro zone is really worthwhile are demonstrating that portability is also the corporation’s greatest vice.  For their sense of ownership does not include even the continent on which they live. They would, to paraphrase Keynes, destroy the dream of a united and peaceful Europe because there was no profit in it. 

Pure free market economics assumes a set of shared cultural values and norms that regulate its transactions “outside the system”, or it becomes coercive and rapacious.  A purely economic union between distant nations who do not share key cultural values cannot optimize profit for everyone. The fixed exchange rate of the Euro works to Germany’s advantage, but not to that of Greece; so also with the common interest rate across the EU.  German bankers see the debt problem in terms of a broken deal; Greek politicians see the problem in terms of the ravages of a 22 percent unemployment rate, an economy that has gone down over 25 percent and ruined lives. Some accommodation outside the formulas of profit optimization must be sought.  Europe is, in a sense, fighting for its soul.  It appears that this is beginning to dawn upon the bankers and politicians and is driving them close to a nervous breakdown. The stridency of their mutual accusations may actually be a positive sign, to the extent that it signals that each side recognizes they cannot get everything they seek. It is time they all lift their eyes to a greater dream.

The issue, though, goes well beyond being just a Euro zone crisis.  It could also be looked at as a first battle between multi-nationals and nations in a war that could continue throughout the 21^st century. For it represents the first highly visible attempt by multi-national corporate interests to dictate the economic terms of life to an entire country.  More are sure to follow.  It behooves us all to be sensitive to the requirements of responsible ownership.

New Routes to the Indies

Some odd piece of technology is often the key to hazards, mystery and adventure in the great stories we remember long after our first encounter with them, from the Trojan Horse to Aladdin’s lamp.  In James Clavell’s classic 1975 novel, Shogun, the protagonist John Blackthorne, an English sailor, obtains a small pilot book that contains Portugal’s most closely guarded secret – the route around Africa to the Indies and to Japan.  Following it, Blackthorne winds up shipwrecked on the coast of Japan, where he takes part in some of the pivotal events of Japanese history; he spends his life there recognized as a  hero, who is remembered even today by a street named for him in Tokyo. For Shogun is actually a fictionalized account of real history, with real consequences.

One of the consequences was the eventual emergence of an expansionist Japanese empire 300 years later into a western world previously hidden from it, and a result of that was World War II.  Fortunately, time and distance had prepared the world for such encounters, and the results were eventually fortunate both for Japan and for the western world.  Not just Blackthorne’s fortunes, but his venture’s worked out well.  But such good luck is not always guaranteed.

The science world is dealing today with another such pilot book, in this case a journal article by a Dutch scientist funded by our own National Institutes of Health describing in detail the laboratory procedures for creating an air-borne form of an avian flu virus previously proven deadly but containable in its natural form.  A similar article has been published about a Wisconsin study, again funded by NIH. Supporters claim another victory in the eternal quest for knowledge, and proclaim it a milestone along the road to a universal vaccine; critics warn that this could lead to world-wide, man-made epidemics that could ravage all humanity.  Either way, this event, along with how we deal with climate change, could be pivotal in the history of the 21^st century, and perhaps of humanity.

It took 300 years for Japan to complete the transition from hidden treasure to expansionist empire. The Pandora’s Box of atomic energy has been contained for 75 years because theoretical knowledge must be combined with practical ability to build complex equipment in order for proliferation to occur.  In both instances, time has permitted the natural evolution of ways to deal with the consequences of the human urge to seek out and publish esoteric knowledge. The problem is that the procedures in the journal article can apparently be followed in any reasonably well-equipped laboratory. Success by two different sets of experimenters in just a few years is testimony to that.   In addition, the experiments themselves can lead to further highly dangerous viruses, beyond just avian flu, that could ravage all humanity, or toward universal vaccines.  We have, in effect, opened a route to a new world of the genetic engineering of pandemics which could be used either for cure or for our own extermination.

The problem also is that Pandora’s Box is impossible to close.  Portugal could not forever hide the route to Japan, the U.S. could not hide the secrets of atomic weaponry, and we shall not be able to censor the procedures for virus manipulation.  Just the knowledge that successful procedures exist will by itself generate imitators.  A rapid search for alternative approaches is underway.  Senate committees are looking at possible policies regarding funding of “dual use” research that can lead to both good and evil, but that has already been proven ineffective for control of chemical warfare and atomic weaponry.  I’m sure international conventions will be proposed and possibly adopted, but terrorists most likely to seek such technology will not be likely to pay attention to that.  Rapid development of a “pandemic preparedness” regimen has already been proposed, but many dark shadows are built into that concept; at the least another level of post-911 intrusive security could emerge, or even worse, the formulation of a mass quarantine and triage hysteria like that which accompanied the bubonic plague. Back then, entire villages were quarantined, with no entry or leaving allowed, and people simply left to die.  In our global village, such approaches will be useless, but nonetheless proposed.

One thing is clear.  The funding for research into anti-virus technology must be stepped up.  Promising advances have already occurred in the ongoing research interaction between genetic engineering and nanotechnology, and these should have their funding built up.  The gap between “pilot book” and consequences has drastically shortened, but so have our response times.  Once again the route has been opened to a new world, and, like it or not, we must enter.

Gay Marriage and the War on Religion

The news is abuzz this morning about President Obama’s announcement that he supports the idea of Gay Marriage.  I’d prefer to stay out of the brouhaha that will roil for several months over this, but at least some scattered attempts at adding clarity to the emotional muddle are needed, and there are times when taking stands really are important.  It’s really important to recognize that the public issue is so complex because it’s really four (or more) issues tangled together – a theological issue, a church/state separation issue, a socioeconomic issue and an emotional issue, each of which is itself complex.

As it turns out, in my analysis, my own view on the theological issue (and yours) is not particularly relevant to the public issue.  That is because, in my view, theology is a set of languages for speaking about the Sacred, each imbedded in a different culture with different words for expressing what may actually be very similar things.  We each in our own groups speak a kind of theological argot which frequently causes us to talk past each other. An example is the silliness surrounding the use of “Allah” versus “God”; both are the same concept expressed in different cultures.  Those misunderstandings are unlikely to change over any short time frame, and Baptists, Episcopalians and Buddhists will continue to charge each other with heresy for saying essentially the same things in different ways.  That is really the basic rationale for religious tolerance: an agreement to accept and live with the fact that we each have our own, individually formed way of understanding the world which others will never really understand.  In any event, it can, and should, make individual religious differences irrelevant for deciding public issues.

And that is a good thing.  For since the Peace of Westphalia, church/state separation has been imbedded in our western European culture.  That’s by way of saying it’s not just an American idea; that’s what the bloody Thirty Years War was fought over that ended at Westphalia, and the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” was actually first used by a Scottish theologian 50 years before the American Constitution. Europeans may actually be a little better at it these days than Americans. In France, for example, each wedding occurs once or twice – first as a required civil ceremony at the city hall, then, optionally, as a religious ceremony at a church; both are celebrated.  Either in France or America, when meeting someone, no one ever inquires which church approved the marriage or whether it was only civil. Marriage is a term that includes many sources of authority.

People have come from all over the world to America to protect their religious views by separating them from the turmoil that accompanies politics.  Protection of the Church from the State motivated our founding fathers more than protection of the State. The irony is that the separation our ancestors strove so hard for is being threatened by the very religious groups they formed.  My own church, the United Methodist, views a marriage as a sacred event, but not a sacrament.  Other churches consider it a sacrament.  Some churches perform Gay marriages; others prohibit them.  Agreement or disagreement with a church’s position can be expressed simply by moving from one church to another. Yet some devout church members seek to have the State set rules on what constitutes a permissible form of sacrament, a topic only the church can decide.  Will an eventual discussion be whether baptism by immersion, a physically dangerous act, should be legally prohibited?  Viewed in that light, the only legal issue about Gay marriage is whether marriage constitutes a contractual arrangement to which all citizens are entitled. The answer clearly is yes. It can be limited legally to an exclusive arrangement (hence the prohibition against polygamy), but not on the basis of gender differences under our Constitution.

The emotional issues any good Jungian will tell you are tied up with our internal struggles with our own nature, and our propensity to project onto some target group (the Other) the features of ourselves we cannot accept.  Because of that, the emotions are life-long for each of us and will never be settled by society for us. They will be resolved societally only over long periods. One hundred years ago, some states still prohibited marriage between whites and blacks; it is still an emotional issue to some, but no longer a legal or societal one. 

The socioeconomic argument against Gay marriage has been that marriage itself is a social arrangement to legitimate the nurture and rearing of children.  An anthropologist might argue that it as much originated to stabilize communities and safeguard the transfer of property. Both those arguments were outgrown long ago.  A headline in our local paper the other day hailed the first marriage of a seventy-year-old local woman; there goes the first argument.  And the newspapers are also replete with accounts of both the recreational marriages of celebrities (followed eagerly by some of the same people who deplore Gay marriages) and accounts of the increasing number of young people who raise children without commitment to marriage.  For that is what a marriage is supposed to represent, a commitment to long-term stable relationship, and the more such relationships form, the more stable the society.

In sum, our American society is facing what constitutes a significant transition for many.  The arguments against Gay marriage are all theological and emotional, and must be met and faced by individuals on an individual basis.  As a society, our commitment to church/state separation leaves no room for retreat; Gay marriage is a form of recognized commitment whose time has come.

Coalition Government

So now it all begins to come together.  Greece and France have rejected the German austerity regimen; can the rest of Europe be far behind?  The Arab world is struggling with its soul to decide where traditional Islamic values end, and political modernism begins.  Putin wins his election and discovers that winning does not mean the end of protests.  China shows cracks in its imperturbable front as ouster of dissident party leaders and escape of human rights protesters reveal new levels of internal struggle.  In the U.S., the Congress for the fourth year in a row continues to be unable even to agree on a Budget.  And multi-national corporations are taking all sides and none, to assure future profits. The situation in Europe has been called chaotic by some observers (as could also be called the situation in the Middle East.)  And that’s an interesting way to describe it.

Chaos is an ancient Greek word (how appropriate!) that can mean either totally without order, or a chasm or abyss, or a cloud of potential creativity.    It’s what we used to describe at the office as an insurmountable opportunity.  Greece and the Middle East seem to illustrate the first definition, the whole Euro zone the second (is it about to leap into dissolution?), and possibly the whole scene the third.  For what is lacking to turn the world on its ear in a burst of creativity is an innovative way to govern though coalition, though not the kind of party coalitions common to traditional politics.

Traditional coalitions are arrangements between political parties in a country to share a majority power in the national legislature by voting cooperatively with each other.  In Greece, for example, the recent election has not gotten any party even close to a majority and they are seeking, unsuccessfully so far, to find a coalition capable of forming a majority government. But even if a coalition is formed, that won’t begin to solve the issues with Germany and the bankers.  That will require concerted action with France and the rest of Europe, which will have their own coalition issues, and in turn lead to the need for concerted action in negotiations with bankers, the IMF and Wall Street.

Some new kinds of coalitions are needed, and that will require recognition of who the actual opposition parties are.  That is not as obvious as it looks.  Germany, for example, is the usual villain named in accounts of the problems of unalloyed European austerity in recent years.  But Germany, along with China, has been one of the most prosperous countries in the world because of its exports. The rest of Europe is a major part of its export market, and unstinted austerity in southern Europe generates substantial risks for German manufacturers and the whole German economy. And so also does inability of southern European customers to pay their bills.  As I’ve noted in a previous post, the IMF has projected a growth in German GDP of only 40 percent of the growth rate of American GDP over the next 5 years.  A healthy growth regimen in Greece and France would likely boost the German economy.  The problem for Germany, as for the rest of Europe, is that German politics is controlled by its bankers, who are focused on foreclosure of southern Europe to the exclusion of all else. But of course, who would be the subsequent buyer?  And not only German bankers are in the mix.  For Goldman Sachs and other large multi-national banks played leading though shadowy roles in generating Europe’s current crises. In fact, then, the real opponents in this case are corporate bankers versus governments responsible to support the needs of all their citizens.

What is needed are coalitions, both governmental and non-governmental, that serve common interests across national boundaries.  The two major assets of multi-national corporations are their portability and immortality.  Their portability enables them to cross or minimize national boundaries with ease and to escape regulatory control by any one nation. Their immortality enables them to accumulate the vast resources that can overpower even the resistance of large sovereign states.  One Sweden-based multi-national corporation, Stora Kopparberg, was chartered in 1288, making it older than many of the over 40 countries where it operates today.  They also are expert at association, cartels, joint ventures and other forms of corporate coalition. Governments in Europe on the other hand, are still more French or Greek or British or German than they are European.  National boundaries form the limit of their visions of problems shared across Europe.  To deal with corporate portability and resources that are damaging to all nations, governments must unite in international regulatory regimens, parties must seek partners across national boundaries (a European Progressive Party?) and social action groups act in concert (an Occupy Europe?).  Creative chaos is an opportunity that should be built upon.

Power, Illustrated

I’ve mentioned the ongoing struggle for dominance between corporations and governments (the preferred term is “sovereign states”) several times lately.  You might find the topic somewhat abstract and so what?, like talking about a struggle between giants somewhere in the Greater Magellanic Clouds  - interesting, but light years away.  So here are a few examples of what’s happening now, up close and personal.

Item: an old friend has a son of whom he is proud; the son, an aeronautical engineer working for a major airplane manufacturer whose planes we all fly on, has recently been appointed to a staff whose duty it is, working for the manufacturer, to review and certify the safety of airplane designs, on behalf of the FAA, (bold added intentionally.)  That is, the staff reviews their company’s design, and in the name of the FAA certifies that is acceptable as meeting all safety standards.  The rationale is that the FAA lacks the expertise and resources to conduct the required review.  As I interpret it, the FAA and the company have switched roles, with the FAA now serving as the public relations agent for the company, assuring the public (that’s you) that the product is ok.  Think about it the next time you fly.

Item: the Washington Post notes in an about federal workers column that the Agriculture Department is planning to privatize the inspection of poultry nationwide to save its resources in the face of budget cuts. So one private corporation will be inspecting and certifying another private corporation on behalf of the federal government to assure you that your chicken dinner is not only yummy but safe.  Meanwhile, new standards for food safety have been delayed for several years since their first announcement.  Supposedly it’s to clear up the wording of regulations; insiders say large food producers are privately protesting and stalling.  Doesn’t that make your chicken taste better and better?

Item:  a Federal Reserve Governor warns that the banking reform initiatives passed in 2010 as the Dodd-Frank Bill are fizzling due to private strong resistance from Wall Street banks, especially JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.  The resistance has grown stronger since 4 of the 19 large banks failed to pass the “stress tests” mandated for them by the legislation.  Resistance is also strong against the “Volcker Rule”, which prohibits banks from using more than 10 percent of customer deposits to “do business with” other banks on their own behalf.  As you recall, that rule is aimed at preventing banks from engaging in risky speculation with their customers money by, among other things, engaging in derivatives trading and “off-the-books” short-term transactions.

Item: I’ve noted before the way gas prices go up and up, even when supply is up and demand is down.  Defenders like Robert Samuelson say its justifiable because it’s a world market and, since everyone needs oil, the oil is ”price-inelastic.”  That’s obfuscatory language for monopolistic or oligopolistic pricing, i.e., charging regardless of the users’ ability or willingness to pay.  Do you recall how prices vary at stations on this side versus the other side of town?  Then why do prices in America, which has growing supplies, have to be up because demand is high in China?  Hmm.  Could it be because Exxon-Mobil is no longer an American corporation?

The struggle for dominance between corporations and sovereign states is not taking place in a galaxy far, far away.  The battlefields are at your grocery store, your airport, you gas station, your bank, and a thousand other places where you live.  When Supreme Courts award another victory to corporations, or corporate lobbyists stem another attempt at government regulation, it’s you that loses.  Think about it.