New millennium to unlease man's moral, political imagination
Dr. Herbert Feith, a visiting lecturer in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta talked about various topics including globalization and the Soros phenomenon in a recent interview with The Jakarta Post.
The topics have earlier been touched on by Dr. Richard Falk, an American professor from Princeton University, during his various talks when he visited Indonesia last month.
Falk believes that globalization creates opportunities for the growth of civil society since the global society will lack independent sources of wealth and will not rely only on military capabilities, allowing a new set of orientations toward politics to take shape.
Question: When Falk visited Indonesia last month he described the power of Soros as a phenomenon of globalization. Do you have a comment on this?
Answer: It is important to see three distinct dimensions of world politics at present: the state, capital, and citizens' organizations. Falk described those symbolically in terms of three people: South African President Nelson Mandela, financier George Soros and the American political scientist Huntington.
Those three names stand for three worlds: the world of states, the world of capital, and the world of civil society or non- governmental organizations (NGOs). States project power across boundaries, capital operates very freely across boundaries, and NGOs are increasingly capable of mobilizing influence across them as well.
Q: Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has come out strongly against Soros. He charged that Soros' moves against Southeast Asian currencies are politically motivated. But Falk sees no political agenda in what Soros did. What do you think?
A: Falk emphasized that global capital has enormous power vis-a- vis the states -- that power has been growing very rapidly. But he does not see Soros as acting according to his personal political preferences. Those are a relatively minor factor. Financiers like Soros are operators in the world of mobile capital.
It's not Soros personally, but a group of financiers who are looking around for the most profitable opportunities in various countries. They compare countries and currencies with each other regarding their longer term strength.
Q: But Mahathir argues that the U.S. government supports Soros to punish Southeast Asian countries for accepting Myanmar into membership of ASEAN...
A: It is true that Soros is a sympathizer of the Myanmarese democratic opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. But I doubt whether that is much of a factor in his financial operations. As a philanthropist, Soros gives money to a variety of political causes including ones to do with democracy in Myanmar. But as a financier, he can't afford to be too influenced by his personal sympathies.
Q: Some people say the American government is only too happy to see the ASEAN countries punished for being assertive on issues like Myanmar.
A: It may well be that a lot of people in the American administration are happy to see Mahathir having economic troubles. Whether they are happy to see Soeharto having troubles is more doubtful. I suppose some elements of the U.S. administration are happy to see that and others unhappy. But the important actors here are global firms rather than states. Soros does not operate by state logic. He operates by the logic of capital.
Q: Falk seems to believe that fast globalization creates opportunities for the growth of civil society. Is there any evidence of that?
A: It's a question of challenge and response. It's not only states in Southeast Asia which are responding to the turbulence which financial movements have generated in the last two months. It is also being done by NGOs. For instance, there was an important conference on globalization in Kuala Lumpur in July held at the initiative of Professor Chandra Muzaffar (from the University of Malaya). As I see it, there needs to be many more initiatives from universities and other non-government groups relating to the extraordinarily fast globalizing changes whose principal engine is capital. And there needs to be greater cooperation between NGOs in the different ASEAN countries.
Q: But what is the evidence that a global civil society is emerging?
A: Falk talked about Mandela as a symbol of the power of ideas and values in global affairs. People in many parts of the world respond to Mandela as they did to Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. People throughout the world feel that they know public figures such as these three -- in much the same way as they know leaders and celebrities in their own countries.
As a result of the way the mass media operates, a large number of people in both rich countries and poor ones see themselves as having a capacity and right to pass judgment on prominent people outside their own country.
Some of them have actively criticized the role of the papparazzi in forcing themselves onto Princess Diana and Dodi while others have expressed anger about the attitude of the British Queen towards Diana. Those are signs that the world is becoming a single moral stage -- as well as a single market.
Q: Is there any relation between globalization and democracy in a country like Indonesia?
A: Globalization has negative consequences and positive ones. One powerful negative consequence is that mobile capital can dictate governments. That is happening all over the world, and especially in Third World countries. That means that governments are under great pressure to spend less on education, health, and other welfare areas and are reluctant to increase their contributions to the United Nations.
The positive side is that fast and cheap long-distance communications -- via the internet, the fax, satellite television, and so on -- makes it possible for us to become more empathetic to people who live in faraway places, and to people of different religions, nationalities, or race in our own communities. That is not creating democracy, but it may be helping to create the conditions for it.
Q: Are you saying that global communication generates more space for dialog?
A: Yes, by creating a new capacity for empathy. It makes people say: I get angry when I see people starving in Africa (or in Gunung Kidul). I get angry because I know that there is more than enough food in this world. That heightened sense of human solidarity is a positive thing.
Q: But has it made military force any less important? Most Asian governments are spending billions of dollars on arms purchases. And many of them are getting worried about the growth of Chinese military power...
A: It is certainly too early to say that armed forces are a thing of the past. States are continuing to spend huge sums on weapons -- often on weapons capable of projecting power a long way beyond their own borders. But there do seem to be long-term trends operating to make weapons less important in world affairs.
Q: Falk says that the turn of the millennium is an opportunity to exercise our moral and political imagination. Do you agree with him?
A: As he sees it, we are all less adventurous than we should be in relation to the moral and political options we face. He is a great admirer of the way Gandhi developed new kinds of political strategies and tactics, including new forms of disciplined and morally exemplary civil disobedience.
In Indonesia, morally exemplary political protest has repeatedly proved effective. When Romo Mangunwijaya threatened to go on a hunger strike in defense of the people of Kampung Kali Code here in Yogyakarta, the government eventually agreed that the developers should not be allowed to destroy the kampong.
And Abdurrahman Wahid's threat to fast on top of Mount Muria against the plan to build a nuclear power plant there may well have helped persuade the government to put off its nuclear power plans.
Happily, more Indonesian NGOs are becoming interested in training their members to engage in disciplined non-violent political action in defense of their supporters. Women's and labor organizations seem to be in the lead in that respect.
Q: But it would be hard to deny that these powerful globalizing trends are a sign that capitalism is triumphant, don't you think?
A: It is certainly true that globalization has strengthened the power of big business. States have been put into a position where they need to give top priority to attracting mobile capital and keeping it within their own borders. That has made it harder for workers, consumers, environmentalists and local communities to get governments to attend to their needs. But it has also given those groups incentives and opportunities to organize transnationally in support of their interests. (asip agus/swa)