(c) Copyright 1998: Graham Strachan
Regardless of what Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Alexander Downer might think (1), ‘globalisation’ means the political, legal, economic and social integration of all the existing nations of the world into a global order under one world dictatorial government. The method being used to bring this about involves (1) inducing nations to get themselves into debt, then (2) under threat of economic warfare of the type presently being waged in Asia, inducing national governments to allow international investors to buy up all major economic assets and public utilities, and (3) inducing those governments to sign away their people’s political, legal, economic and social sovereignty by entering into various ‘treaties’ and ‘agreements’ at the United Nations (UN), or the OECD, or wherever. There is ample documentary evidence for this, but for the best evidence the reader should simply look at what is happening around them.
One of the arguments used by globalists (including Mr. Downer) to justify this is that ‘globalism’ is the thinking of the future, while the desire for national independence and self-government is the thinking of the past. This is pure globalist ideology, a false version of reality. The idea that nationalism is ‘outmoded’ and on the way out is contradicted by all the evidence. The distinct trend of history in recent times has been toward smaller governmental units, toward national autonomy and separateness, towards nations dealing with each other on the basis of voluntary cooperation rather than as member states of some larger political union.
Globalism, resisting this trend, wants to collectivise them again, herd them all together, eliminate their autonomy, and force them to participate in a ‘global economy’, a ‘global neighbourhood’, even a ‘global religion’ (true!), and answer to one global government. Far from being the ‘thinking of the future’, globalism is the old empire-building impulse of the past, a frame of mind which has disrupted human existence for the past 5,500 years, now directed globally.
NATIONALISM
Nationalism has three distinct components (1) a feeling of union by a distinct people, resulting from a common culture, language, history, locality or race (2) fusion of those people with a political state with a government, and (3) the idea that those people united in that state have a right to self-government and to decide their own future (self-determination).
The feeling of nationhood is as old as mankind, and is the strongest of all group feelings. Hans Kohn, in the book ‘Nationalism: Its Meaning and History’ states (p.9), “A deep attachment to one’s native soil, to local traditions and to established territorial authority has existed in varying strengths throughout history”(2). Morris Ginsberg writing on the diversity of morals says, “The essential characteristic of the nation is the sentiment of unity. In this sense nationalism must be very ancient, since there must always have existed groups conscious of their unity.”(3) The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought says: “Despite the rival claims of class war on the one hand and internationalism on the other, nationalism as a mass emotion has been the most powerful political force in the history of the world.”(4)
Throughout history the feeling of unity of a people has been the main obstacle to empire-building rulers who wanted to conquer as many other nations as they could and incorporate them into their empires. But the modern nation-state did not emerge until the end of the Middle Ages, around 1500. The medieval state had been a territory ruled by a monarch, which might encompass several ‘peoples’ or nations. Because of this, according to Professor Alfred Cobben, provincial sentiment, the feeling of unity of a people, was a strong rival of the medieval monarchy.(5)
It was only at the end of World War I that the nation-state came fully into its own. The old empires of the Habsburgs and Romanovs were in ruins, and new boundaries had to be drawn on maps. The basis on which those boundaries were drawn was nationalism. It seemed to be the natural way to organise the world, a potential formula for stability. The new nation-states of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia and Romania were created along nationalist lines. Nationalism is modern, not ancient. It has been evolving in, not out.
INTERNATIONALISM
What then is the history of globalism, or, as it used to be called, ‘internationalism’? According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, “The development of nationalism ran counter to the conceptions that had dominated political thought for the preceding 2,000 years. Hitherto man had commonly stressed the general and the universal and had regarded unity as the desirable goal.” What form did this 2000 year-old conception take? The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought is instructive here: “World society theory” which “conceives of the world as a society of individuals and communities rather than as a patchwork of competing nation-states has a long history and was reflected, for example, in medieval aspirations for the unity of Christianity.....”
The ‘medieval aspirations for unity of Christianity’ were those underpinning the Holy Roman Empire, a political empire ruled by the Roman Church. Under it the popes dominated the political affairs of the West, claiming the right to choose and crown monarchs. ‘Medieval aspirations for the unity of Christianity’ were imperial, empire-building aspirations, driven by the false idea that people are ‘united’ by herding them together into ever bigger political conglomerates.
Such aspirations were not confined to the Holy Roman Empire. The same aspirations drove the old Persian Empire, the Assyrian Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Roman Empire itself, then the European colonial Empires of the late 19th century and the Soviet Union during this. Internationalism manifested itself as imperialism, the tendency of rulers to gather as many peoples as possible under the one umbrella.
Until now, empires were limited in size by the dictates of their times. The Roman empire, for example, expanded until it extended from the Scottish border around to Assyria in the East, then ran up against limitations imposed by travel, communications, and the cost of administration. Such limitations no longer exist. Now that it’s possible through modern technology to control the entire world, it is inevitable that the imperial impulse should appear again in global mode.
Globalism, ‘world society theory’, internationalism, is imperialism directed globally: new bottle, stale old wine. Even now many observers are describing the behavior of America, particularly American big business which is one tool by which globalism is being brought about, as ‘neo-imperialism’, and the world state that is likely to result as ‘neo-feudalism’.
Far from being the thinking of the future, ‘globalism’ is the ossified thinking of the past, a view that has never been the view of the ordinary people of the world but of greedly power-lusting rulers and their elite hangers-on. Not only that, but from the Sumrian Empire around 3500 BC to the Soviet Union during this century, no empire has survived, and there is no reason whatsoever to believe that a single global empire would have any better chance of survival than the others.