PREVENTING WAR AND GLOBAL RECESSION:
CHANGE GLOBALIZATION TO A WIN-WIN GAME
By Hazel Henderson; author, futurist, consultant on sustainable
development and member of the World
Summit 2002 Memorandum Group. Her latest book is 'Beyond Globalization:
Shaping a Sustainable Global Economy'.
Scenarios of global economic recession were on the horizon before
the awful attacks of September 11 on the symbols of finance, world
trade and US military power. Economic globalization took down the
firewalls between national economies - producing today’s roller
coaster of synchronized economic downturns. Financial markets electronically
linked worldwide spread “contagion” and currency turbulence.
These markets, whose movements are amplified instantly by global
mass media, have now become transmission belts of every shock -
as we saw in the world’s falling stock markets in the aftermath
of September 11th. For the second time in history economic globalization
may end in depression - as in the 1930s and another lengthy war.
Yet terrorism must be faced and checked, and such crimes against
humanity must be brought to justice. How can all this be achieved
without inflicting further violence and terror on more innocent
civilians?
Such questions are no longer only posed by pacifists, but by increasing
millions of “global citizens” who have faced the realities of interdependence
created by economic and technological globalization: we live in
one world where borders are vanishing. These globally-aware 21st
Century humans with their candlelight vigils and peaceful marches
in New York City, London and other cities around the world oppose
US military retaliation.
They offer new analyses, actions and strategies - many similar
to those of ignored security strategists in the Pentagon, the CIA
and policy think tanks who warned that terrorism required a top-to-bottom
rethink of US military force structure and priorities.
These “change the game” strategies should be heeded and implemented
before knee-jerk military strikes kill more poverty stricken innocents;
whether in Afghanistan or in the wider conflict, and more terrorist
attacks. Eye-for-an-eye dogmas belong to history - not the 21st
century.
There is still time to avoid the looming global economic deflation
and depression - caused by laying off employees, panicked investors
and consumers - with resulting sliding stocks and prices, and rising
inventories increasing a worldwide glut.
Instead of the US leading a coalition of bombing raids - countries
with large inventories and backlogs of unsold food, clothing and
other consumer goods could start air-lifting those surplus goods
and parachuting them all over Afghanistan. Starving Afghans, whose
UN and other food and humanitarian aid have been cut off as a result
of the US threats can fill their stomachs and find new strength
to resist their Taliban oppressors.
As unsold commodities, consumer goods, radios and magazines float
down from the skies, the Taliban will become further discredited
for their economic failures. As unsold inventories are reduced in
stagnating economies in Europe, Asia, North and South America, production
can be revived and people re-employed. These economies and companies
will rediscover the power of bartering - their surplus goods for
peace - at a fraction of the cost of weapons and military strikes.
Such outside-the-box strategies are common to game theorists. Today,
they are advocated by strategic policy analysts in university think
tanks and derive from architect and engineering genius Buckminster
Fuller, after whom the carbon-based “buckyballs” are named. Fuller,
the most practical futurist of the 20th century called for human
design revolutions so that our evolving technological societies
could provide for 100% of humanity - within the tolerances of planetary
ecosystems.
Many thousands of Bucky Fuller’s former students teach in universities,
invent green technologies and, like myself, promote win-win approaches
to today’s malfunctioning globalization and money systems. Today’s
global casino is largely unregulated, providing conduits for money-laundering,
funds transferred by terrorists, drug lords and mafia groups. In
April 2000, the G-7, and the OECD, with full support of then US
Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, launched an effective blacklist
of all financial havens harboring such illicit financial transactions.
The incoming Bush Administration then withdrew US support. Mr. Bush
reversed this policy on September 24th - in recognition that regulating
global financial flows is key to stemming terrorists as well as
other criminals.
But money-based systems, policies and national accounts, such as
GNP are only half the story - and limit our thinking and strategies.
Money does not equate with wealth, a broader term, which includes
human creativity, intellectual and social capital and ecological
assets. Outside the box of conventional economics lie a wealth of
creative strategies based on barter, reciprocity, mutual aid, sharing
and cooperation. This hidden parallel economy is estimated at $16
trillion annually, but money-free and therefore invisible to economists.
These strategies used by the other half of humanity, the poor and
those bypassed by globalization, are all considered irrational and
primitive by market economics with its competitive strategies of
maximization of self interest and profitability.
Those who advocate airlifting surplus supplies, food and unsalable
consumer goods to Afghans follow the logic of game theory, not economics.
The world’s growing glut of unsold inventories is causing layoffs,
deflation and recession in today’s tightly-linked economies. Clearing
the back-logged shelves in exchange for Afghans’ goodwill in deposing
the Taliban and bringing Al-Qaeda’s network to justice, makes more
sense than a 20th-century style war. Wars have always been one way
of getting out of economic depressions - as World War II production
ended the Great Depression.
Today, we know a better way. Reciprocity, barter, cooperation and
mutual aid (win-win) work better than competition (win-lose) in
a closed system like today’s interdependent global economy. They
are also superior national security strategies. Many within the
Pentagon have tried to promote more diplomacy and better prevention
of terrorism, cyber-warfare and the new Information Age threats
of the 21st Century.
Such game theorists as Robert Steele, founder of the think tank
OSS, Inc., William Perk, former board member of the Buckminster
Fuller Institute, Jan Lee Martin of Australia’s Futures Foundation
and many others understand the wealth of win-win strategies available
beyond conventional economic and military thinking. An example was
Mikhail Gorbachev’s challenging the US to cooperate with him in
reducing nuclear weapons. Baffled Pentagon hardliners finally understood
his use of “tit for tat” game theory and began to cooperate, allowing
Regan and Gorbachev to find common ground. In the 1950s, Cold War
sociologist David Reisman in his famous essay “The Nylon War” proposed
a classic win-win game to discredit Soviet leaders in the eyes of
ordinary Russians by parachuting consumer goods into the USSR. Military
brass could not think of such surprise tactics.
Competitive strategies remain important for national security and
economics. But as the very new challenges of the 21st Century and
globalization unfold before us, expanding our policy approaches
to embrace game theory, including win-win cooperation and initiating,
as Gorbachev did, virtuous cycles of behavior, such as the boom
in socially responsible investing, can serve the world well. Even
economists are getting these concepts and seeing that in an interdependent
global economy, business-as-usual competition can turn into a lose-lose
game for all countries.
Win-win globalization will focus far beyond humanitarian assistance
and food aid to reduce surpluses. The adoption of strategies already
agreed to in UN summits in the 1990s on food, children, health,
human rights, shelter and poverty eradication would make the world
a safer place. The reduction of weapons budgets worldwide, as security
is redefined in human terms, need not cause massive unemployment
and depression. There will be enough work for everyone in redesigning
sustainable societies based on renewable energy and resource-use
that can provide for 100% of the human family. In our globalized,
interdependent world, justice, equity and cooperation have become
pragmatic.
ends.
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