US Power and International Finance

I was reading Stephen Walt's Taming American Power (published in 2005) and it spoke of the importance of other states replicating US financial practices in order to stabilise the international financial system and prevent shocks. 

This would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic. The US and its allies (both states and institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank) have pressed states around the world to adopt economic and financial policies which benefit US capital. 

What did this achieve? A mutually-beneficial financial stability? Far from it, as the 2007-9 'American crisis' (Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin's apt phrase) which resulted in considerable shocks worldwide demonstrates. 

All it has done is entrench structural global inequalities based on institutions and practices which overwhelming benefit the already-dominant United States.

It's time those of us who want a world based on equality of opportunity, human rights and democracy to recognise that Western governments are not the advocates of these principles except in rhetorical terms. That they talk about political freedoms as a means of obscuring us from the area where human rights and democracy are most important: in the socio-economic realm. 

A step in the right direction

First Burma, now North Korea: are the world's pariah states moving towards greater global cooperation? As Burma loosened its grip on domestic freedoms, last year saw the US Secretary of State visit the nation for the first time in decades signifying a thawing in international relations. In a move that many have seen as an attempt to weaken reliance upon China, Burma seems to be changing for the better. Is North Korea now making the same step (and, perhaps, for the same reason)? Today it was announced that, in exchange for US food supplies, North Korea would suspend its nuclear programme.

We can only hope that all nations will take a leaf out off these countries' books in moving toward cooperation and negotiation for the greater good. For while both the isolationism and the oppression of human rights of North Korea and Burma are on the extreme end of the scale, every country could benefit from some self-reflection, greater co-operation and democratic changes on the path to greater good for all.