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Regionalisation
Instead of Globalisation?
The following excerpt from the leading peace and conflict researcher Ernst-Otto
Czempiel argues that regionalisation and not globalisation characterises our
age.
"It appears that globalisation has become the watchword for the end of the
20 century. In any case, it is in everyone’s mouths. In fact, the world has
become the horizon of experience for societies. The media report worldwide,
transport links are global, and transnational corporations are represented in
many countries of the world. Globalisation is also used as an argument for
desired changes in politics and economics. It serves to stage political change.
However, the term globalisation does not stand up to further scrutiny. The
internationalisation of the world economy already began in the mid 19th Century,
and, since the mid sixties, transnational corporations have simply extended that
what that they started long before. As before, they are still not represented on
a worldwide basis. Their catchment area, the industrial and newly industrialised
countries, stretches in a thin line from North America across Western Europe to
South-East Asia. Little can be felt of globalisation north and south of this.
More than the half of humanity needs to travel for two days to reach the next
telephone. Therefore, the world still has a long way to go before it is
globalised in terms of economic welfare.
Processes exist with a range of influence that is worldwide. During the Cold
War, this included the threat of nuclear weapons. Their use would have led to
consequences worldwide, and may have even wiped out the Earth. Air and water
pollution can make the whole world suffer, just as a change in the climate can.
These processes should not be underestimated, but need to be taken very
seriously. However, they do not justify raising globalisation to the watchword
of the age.
A further systematic meaning can be seen to soar alongside the term
globalisation. Globalisation does not just mean range of influence, but also
relationships. The states are linked to one another. They are no longer
isolated, no longer autonomous in the satisfaction of their political interests.
They are dependent on one another. Those who talk of globalisation have this
relationship in mind; the element of interdependence. This is in fact something
new, and did not exist fifty years ago, or only in allusion. But this level of
interdependence still does not exist on a global level today. The world economic
crisis of the second half of the nineties demonstrates this. It had its origins
in South-East Asia and affected the industrial nations. But they were not
dragged into the crisis. The affect was regional, but not global (...).
The term globalisation pointedly suggest, but at the same time vaguely, that the
position of the state had changed doubly at the end of the Twentieth Century. It
is mantled by the processes of interdependence, which only allow a state to
achieve its aims when other states cooperate. The state becomes (...) very
closely linked to its neighbours. This process mostly takes place regionally.
Regionalisation is therefore the watchword of the age, and not globalisation.
Only very few processes influence the whole world: the potential for nuclear
destruction, and the pollution of our air and water.
At the same time, the state in the world of the industrial nations is rife with
social players. They have emancipated themselves from the control of
governments, and have developed their own active relationships in international
politics. Cooperations with partners in other states creates a network of social
interaction allowing them to pit themselves against the governments. Players of
this kind are not just - when only to a limited degree - transnational
corporations. Important transnational corporations are also non-governmental
organisations such as Amnesty International or OXFAM."
[Taken from: Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Regionalisierung
und Globalisierung – Herausforderungen der deutschen Außenpolitik; in:
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Akademie der politischen Bildung (Hg.), Globale
Politik für eine globale Welt – Das Vermächtnis von Willy Brandt, Bonn 1999,
p.
24-25 and 30-31]
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