Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1998 14:07:00 +0100 To: Gunder Frank From: rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore) Subject: Re: ReORIENT thesis - an objection JONATHAN FRIEDMAN , Carolyn Ballard , jslakov@TartanNET.ns.ca (Jan Slakov), wsn@csf.colorado.edu (world-system network), philofhi@yorku.ca (philosophy of history) Dear Gunder, We've had earlier correspondence on your ReORIENT thesis, but I was not satisfied with how we left things. The quote below, from your recent widely-publicised announcement provides the context I need to make my point... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5/31/98, Gunder Frank wrote: > > R e O R I E N T : > G L O B A L E C O N O M Y I N T H E A S I A N A G E > [University of California Press, May/June 1998] > by > Andre Gunder Frank >AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT >This book outlines and analyzes the global economy and its sectoral >and regional division of labor and cyclical dynamic from 1400 to >1800. The evidence and argument are that within this global economy >Asians and particularly Chinese were preponderant, no more >"traditional" than Europeans, and in fact largely far less so. ------ >Europe took advantage of this world economic opportunity >through import substitution, export promotion and technological >change to become Newly Industrializing Economies after 1800, as is >again happening today in East Asia. That region is now REgaining its >'traditional' dominance in the global economy, with the Chinese >'Middle Kingdom' again at its 'center.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I have no problem with your analysis of the period 1400 to 1800, in fact I'm not qualified to comment, and even my sincere praise of your bold originality is not well-enough informed to be worth these bytes that express it. Where I have a serious objection is when you say: >That region is now Regaining its >'traditional' dominance in the global economy, with the Chinese >'Middle Kingdom' again at its 'center.' OK, I can easily go along with the thesis that there is some kind of `dynamism', or whatever, in Asia that would, if things were left to their `natural devices', lead to a global dominance by Asia. I can even believe that your book documents this dynamism and shows its historical roots. In fact, the existence of this tendency toward Asian power is rather obvious from more recent history, without reference to the earlier era. What must be noted, however, are the specific Western response to this tendency. Allow me to briefly review a few well-known historical `incidents' to illustrate what I mean... 1) Opium War. We had a situation where Britain was importing more tea than could balance its exports to China. In other words, China's natural economic dominance was beginning to display itself, as you `predicted'. But what happened? A specific act of _agency is what happened! Q. Victoria launched a specific imperialist war to achieve a specific enonomic objective: by forcing China to import opium, a mechanism was created that reversed the balance of payments and allowed the West to retain its economic dominance for another century. 2) WW-2. This time Japan was the focus of Asian power stirrings. Japan's dynamism allowed it to create a world-class industrial base, a navy that could challenge the US Navy, and an economic sphere that rivaled those of the Western great powers. Gunder - this _was the emergence of the "'traditional' dominance" that you describe! It has _already happened! And what was the Western response? The response was again a specific and decisive act of _agency. The Western powers made the decision to suppress this uprising, rather than welocme Japan as another great imperial power. This led to the `Pacific Theater' in WW-2, the destruction of Japan, and the systematic rebuilding of Japan in such a way that it became a player in the Western-controlled imperial system, able to compete econom- ically, but not able to participate in geopolitial management. 3) Containment of Red China. Again we had a situation where an Asian power was declaring its independence of Western hegemony, and aiming to assert itself. The _agent response in this case was military, economic, and technological containment, which succeeded in keeping China's influence and economic power down for decades. 4) SE-Asian currency crisis. Again an Asian power-nexus developed in Asia, this time the `tiger economies' of SE Asia. And again this uprising was squelched by Western agency, this time by pulling out investments precipitously and systematically rebuilding the economic and social structures under the guiding hand of the IMF (dominated by the same Western banking interests that control the international financial system and who pulled the plug on the tigers). What took MacCarthur, so to speak, a gener- ation to accomplish in Japan is being done in a fortnight by the IMF in SE Asia. And recent developments indicate Japan itself may be brought to its knees in the same way, and of course it will be re-programmed in the same way by the IMF. 5) The coming confrontation with China. China is gearing up to establish itself as Asian hegemon. It has said as much, it has asserted its `right', and it is launching on a `leap-frog' military upgrade, aimed especially at neutralizing the flagship of the US Navy, the carrier task force. In the meantime, the US is racing to upgrade its C4 warfare technology to enable it to overcome whatever the Chinese are able to come up with, gain `control of theater', and do to China what it did to Iraq. The strategic key to this coming confrontation is _tempo, and in that regard all the cards are held by the West. At the current moment the US could readily `win', under some definition of `acceptable losses', a military confrontation with China. So beginning now, the US can track Chinese developments, monitor its own progress with C4 deployment, and _choose the moment of conflict to its own advantage, never allowing China to get to the point where it might `win'. The US-engineered India-Pakistan conflict can be viewed as `keeping the pot simmering' vis a vis US plans for decisive intervention in Asia. So there you have it. The power struggle between Asia and the West has been going on uninterrupted since 1800. The natural dynamism of Asia has demonstrated itself time and time again, and always the West has used its specific advantages of the moment to keep Asia down and to systematically intervene in Asian arrangements so as to overcome the natural dynamics and re-channel them to permit continued Western hegemony. Imperialism is kind of like setting up an irrigation system, only instead of moving water to irrigate deserts, you move wealth from where it is created to those who control the canals. I therefore find the following statement highly misleading and in urgent need of retraction or substantial refinment: >That region is now Regaining its >'traditional' dominance in the global economy, with the Chinese >'Middle Kingdom' again at its 'center.' This is not at all a minor point. When one reads your AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT, this claim about a coming rise of Asia is in fact the climax of your presentation, literally the last sentence. You are in fact _selling your book on the basis of its supposed relevance to current affairs! There is indeed a relevance, Asian dyanmism is part of the equation, but your predicted `rise' has been occurring ever since 1800, has been systematically managed and controlled by the West, and this regime promises to continue indefinitely, just as has the domination of what we euphemistically call the Third World, most of which, as Parenti points out, should be `naturally' quite wealthy and prosperous. Sorry to be so confrontational about all this, but I just _hate it when knowledgeable people sell mumbo jumbo disinformation to the masses. rkm cadre@cyberjournal.org http://cyberjournal.org