> It is by Immanuel Wallerstein.
> Comment No. 30, Dec. 15, 1999
>
> [The US media]
> have noticed that the EU and Japan have constantly given in to U.S.
> political pressure on questions such as the Gulf War, NATO expansion,
> and Kosovo. But they haven't noticed that, over the past thirty years,
> the EU and Japan have not given in on a single major economic issue
> (such as the Russian oil pipeline to western Europe, or the innumerable
> ways in which Japan limits access of U.S. corporations and banks to
> Japanese internal markets).
Very true. It's one of the greatest ironies of globalization, namely that even though the US organized and led the process, the cultural effects of globalization hit the Noram zone very late indeed. Or rather, the US consumption culture isn't matched by an equivalent political or economic culture. They who live by rentier capitalism, die by rentier capitalism...
-- Dennis