What the anti-globalization movement and the anti-war movement both have in common is a tendency to look at the world international relations within a framework that is appropriate to how the world looked at the height of the cold war thirty years ago.
Both have their object of protest, "global capitalism" in the case of the first movement, "imperialism" in the case of the second, as if we are dealing with monolithic entities which are tidily summed up by both phrases.
Has Putin's speech against the United States been getting *any* airplay whatsoever in the States? It is all over the media here.
The leader of a major industrialized country has openly challenged the aspiration to hegemony by the world's leading military power. Meanwhile, Venezuela under Chavez is creating problems in the hegemon's backyard. The European Union is carving out its own sphere of influence, the Kosovo war having been the opening salvo of that gambit.
But anti-globalization and anti-war movementists both have a tendency to assume, wrongly, that there is a monolithic bloc of capitalists and imperialists, "us versus them".
The left had better accomodate itself very quickly to the emerging reality of a multi-polar world, with the U.S. revealed to be the lackluster economic and military power that it is. Not that the U.S. is going to fold up and give in anytime soon, but it is clearly no longer calling the shots globally.
Romantic mystifications about the "battle of Seattle" only serve to further mystify reality. Squabbles between nation states over matters such as agriculture subsidies and import tarrifs have far more impact upon such trade talks succeeding or collapsing than self-deluding protest movements.
I advocate attendance at the G8 Summit protests in Heiligendamm in the summer, because I am opposed to the voices of "critical criticism" who wish to wait for a perfect social movement to spring fully-formed from Zeus's forehead before we can engage in praxis. But it does us no good to obscure the fact that the level of thinking in the contemporary social movements is rather shoddy.
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