IIRE Global Justice School 2003

GLOBALIZATION, BREAKS IN THE EQUILIBRIUM IN ASIA

AND RECOMPOSITIONS ON THE LEFT

(Globalization and political recomposition, II: cracks in the Asian models)

Pierre Rousset

INTRODUCTION

* Objectives of this second report:

--- An illustration of the imbalances created in the dominant order by capitalist globalization

--- An illustration of the recomposition under way on the left => issues that we will revisit tomorrow

--- Introduction to elements that are specific to Asia.

* Warning: Asia is extremely diverse!

--- From Laos to South Korea, from Sri Lanka to China

* The limits of the reporter

I / THE BACKDROP

A. Asian diversity and geopolitical unities

* Seen from within: does Asia exist?

--- The most diverse geopolitical entity in the world

--- Several regional poles. Unified neither by colonization nor by decolonization.

* Seen from the outside: a geopolitical whole forged by:

--- Rivalry among the big powers

--- The clash between revolutions and counter-revolutions

--- The Cold War

* Seen from one side and the other:

--- East and West

B. Capitalist globalization and its contradictions:

In search of a new mode of domination

* Beyond the economy

See: FI resolution on resistance to globalization

--- A universal "liberal" model of domination?

--- Implications on every level (the issue of territorial control)

--- Strength of the process of its Achilles heels:

**- Overestimation of the social relationship of forces

**- Insensitivity to the question of legitimacy

**- Intensity of inter-imperialist contradictions

=> From Seattle to Cancun

II / CRISES AND BREAKS IN THE EQUILIBRIUM IN ASIA

<= Violence of the imperialist offensive (economic recolonization of a high-growth region)

<= End of equilibriums fixed during the Cold War (India/Pakistan)

=> A period of instability opens up in Asia

=> Combinations of crises

* On the economic level

See Husson on origins of the crisis

* Regimes in crisis

- Importance of Suharto's overthrow in Indonesia (1998)

=> Delegitimation of the international financial institutions

- Importance of the BJP's rise to power in India

**=> The secular state put into question

* Military globalization and the multiplication of areas of tension

<= Brutality and limits of the US order

<= Political dynamics of "anti-terrorism"

- Wars and quagmires to the west

- Nuclear proliferation and the Indo-Pakistani standoff in South Asia

- Importance of US intervention in the Philippines (Mindanao) in Southeast Asia

- A frozen situation in the Korean Peninsula in Northeast Asia

- Rise of intercommunal tensions (crisis of socialist solidarity as a reference point)

* Self-assertion by regional powers

- Pursuit of remilitarization (including political remilitarization) by Japan

- China in East Asia

- India in South Asia

=> The new world disorder seen from Asia

III / RECOMPOSITION ON THE ASIAN LEFT

* The antiwar movement and rebuilding solidarity

- The question of the link between resistance to neoliberal globalization and the struggle for peace: posed precociously in Asia

- The Okinawa Conference: rethinking international security from the peoples' point of view

- The Mindanao experience: weaving a fabric of concrete solidarity among communities

- Asian networks (ASA)

* The importance of moving the World Social Forum (WSF) from Porto Alegre to Mumbai (Bombay)

See the introduction to the FI resolution on resistance to globalization

- The specificity of the Social Forum process among the various forms of resistance

- The first test of internationalizing the WSF, beyond the Latin America/Europe axis

- The first test of rooting the Social Forum process in the East

--- India: diversity of its movements and pluralism of its society

--- Renewing the themes (nuclear issues, caste, communalism, etc.)

* The emergence of a new (pluralist) internationalism of radical parties

- The Philippines: an extreme example

--- Hidden pluralism (before 1985)

--- The crisis of the CPP and self-assertion of a diverse radical left

--- An apprenticeship in pluralism on the one hand and the culmination of its absolute rejection by Sison's CPP: assassination as a policy

- The experience of the Asia-Pacific Solidarity Conference in Sydney

--- 1998: the pluralism of parties represented, the will to dialogue

--- 2002: the possibility of acting together? (the field of resistance to globalization)

- Preparation of the meeting of "radical parties" in Mumbai

- Parties from Europe, Asia and beyond: the new internationalism of radical parties?

<= Modification of the framework of action (after the Cold War)

<= Rise of a new political generation and therefore of reference points out of its own experience

=> Continuity (transmission) and development of organizations. To be continued tomorrow.