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Dear Khalid
and other FOTH readers
In an earlier posting, I mentioned that certain ideas seem to be accepted
tacitly by all (or almost all) the participants on this site, and said I
would return to one more of these. It is perhaps the most important and
most pervasive. I refer to the idea of imperialism.
Postings on FOTH talk about imperialism at every turn, for some
reason. I wanted to ask everyone, "What do you mean by it? Where is
your evidence?" The only disagreement seemed to be about how much we
should worry about it and fight it. I go further, challenging its very
existence. I presume that you don't mean the more blatant
"geo-political' imperialism of the colonial era. This implies that you
mean one of two things: invasions such as in Iraq
or Afghanistan,
or the subtler concept of economic imperialism. However, I reject both
notions. In this posting I'll consider the economic kind. In a later
posting I'll consider the case of Afghanistan, as an example of
invasion.
If what you mean is economic imperialism, then I concede that
in one way what you all assume is close to the truth, but it is not
imperialism, and it is not a "western" issue. The developed
nations have not made enough progress in freeing up trade, to allow less
developed countries free access to markets. However, this isn't just
western nations; South
Korea, for example, has dragged the
chain on this perhaps more than others. The reason I do not call such
protection "imperialism" is that its motives are varied, but
almost never involve any kind of unethical expansion. For example, the
French government subsidises its farmers in order
to preserve a cherished and nostalgic aspect of French rural life. As a
free-trader, I oppose this vehemently. However, it is not imperialism.
The best way to see the demise of economic imperialism is to consider Japan,
though it is by no means the only example. After the Second World War,
under the initial stewardship of Douglas McArthur, the US unselfishly built Japan up to be not only a genuine democracy
but an economic rival to the US itself. It was so successful
in this that by the 1980s America's
once bitter enemy had become an enemy of a very different and more benign
kind: a serious trade rival. In fact, by that stage, Americans had become
despondent that Japan
would supplant it as the economic powerhouse of the future. It didn't,
remaining the world's number two economy. However,
even during that time of Japan's
economic ascendancy, there was no general feeling among Americans that they
had made a mistake by not punishing it and keeping it downtrodden. This
kind of action is the very antithesis of imperialism. Far from
"establishing its economic dominance", it is in fact diminishing
its own former dominance. What I say about Japan
applies equally (or almost equally) to other countries, most notably Taiwan, South
Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. Other nations are
free to follow free-market policies and join the club, and we have seen
this happen in the newly-freed nations of Eastern Europe, most notably the
small Baltic states.
The effect has been genuinely civilizing. Japan is a more harmonious
nation than it was under the old imperial system. It long ago joined the
family of civilized nations, and America can largely be thanked
for that. Most older Japanese see the truth in
this, though the new generation takes the modernity and affluence of Japan for
granted, and is as likely to be anti-US as other naive and idealistic
youngsters elsewhere in the world. But if introducing liberal democracy,
freedom of speech and economic openness doesn't have a civilizing
effect, I don't know what does. What is most interesting about this western
welcoming policy to the East Asian nations is that it gives the lie to any
cultural argument about western political and economic favoritism. These
are nations with long-established cultures which are very different from
western culture. Yet they were welcomed into the "economic club"
of the affluent.
The same can be seen in the oil-rich countries of the Middle
East. People say that western oil companies ripped them off
initially, and that may be true. But those events happened in the
imperialist past. Why are these countries so rich now? Clearly, they have
freed themselves from their former western controllers and gathered all the
benefits of their natural wealth. Western economic imperialism, if it
exists, seems to have failed miserably here! Last year's economic collapse
was a disaster for Middle Eastern investors. The Economist has suggested
that Saudi investors alone lost close to a trillion dollars because of the
collapse of their portfolios in the USA. This is a disaster on the
surface of it, but let us not miss an important underlying fact here: that
the Great Satan has been sufficiently open economically to allow foreign
investors of an alien and sometimes hostile culture to own a huge slice of
its insurance schemes, its banks, its construction companies….a huge slice
of its very self.
You can see from all this that I do not believe in the idea of
economic imperialism. Of course, this may not be the kind of imperialism
that these FOTH participants mean. In a later posting, I'll consider
another possible interpretation: invasion. It may be that there is another
meaning of "imperialism" that I have missed. If this is the case,
I apologies and humbly wait for someone to explain it to me.
Peter Joyce
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