WEEK 10

CREEPING UNILATERALISM (1996-2000)

Dr.Sreeram Sundar Chaulia

Vice Dean
Jindal School of International Affairs
O.P.Jindal Global University
Sonipat, India
Offi ce: A-125
Email: schaulia@jgu.edu.in
A Prostrate World
o Russia’s dark age- tumbling Ruble, new
oligarchs , “robber capitalism”and asset
stripping. Economic crisis in transition
countries was twice as intense as the Great
Depression

o Yeltsin- Clinton’s junior partner in Europe.

o Shock therapy- did the US deliberately rub

salt into Russian wounds? Mass privatisation
on the advice of Harvard economist Jeffrey
Sachs increased the death rate in Russia and
the former communist Eastern Europe by 13
percent; unemployment by 56 percent.

o Joseph Stiglitz- shock therapy was

“ideology trumping good economic
analysis.”
Prostrate World Continued…
o Asian financial crisis (1997)
Major blow to Tiger and Tiger cub
economies (except Malaysia) that
over-liberalised their economies; China’s
growth miracle also dented by the regional
slowdown in East and Southeast Asia;
single digit growth in the late 90s;
non-performing loans in the banking
system and other structural weaknesses
o Crackdown on the Falun Gong and
continued discontent in Tibet and Xinjiang

o “Hide your strength and bide your time”

o Europe struggles to deepen regional

integration- nationalist recidivism,
referendums rejecting closer union; messy
admission process for former eastern bloc
members; Euro took 9 years to be launched,
after several pitfalls.
o A unified European defence and foreign
policy would have to wait for 2009
An American Century?
o Madeleine Albright- “We are the
indispensable nation”

o The “Roaring Nineties” and America as

its nerve centre

o During the eight years of the Clinton

presidency, the economy expanded by 50%
in real terms; by the end of his tenure, the
US had a GNP that was one quarter of the
entire world economic output; The stock
market grew by more than three times -
creating thousands of millionaires among
middle class stockholders, and employees
of fast-growing companies like Microsoft -
before the dot com bubble burst in 2000.

o Stiglitz- Rule of finance in the 1990s was

supreme and government deferred too
much to Wall Street; the prosperity and
growth of that decade laid the foundation
for today's economic problems, including
too much deregulation, inadequate
accounting standards, and pandering to
corporate greed.
Humanitarian Imperialism Renewed
o Ethnic entrepreneurs in the disintegration of
Yugoslavia; Milosevic and Hitler’s ghost
o US response to Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing in
Kosovo- “Madeleine’s war” in 1999 without UN
consent- “the lessons of Munich”
o US bombing of Serbia was excessive and
pulverising- was it to compensate for inaction in
Bosnia during the genocide?
o Bombing actually worsened the plight of
Kosovars in Serbia and speedened Milosevic’s
atrocities; “Can bombing be humanitarian?”
o Bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade-
ultimate sign of unipolarity?
o Russia’s failure to come to aid of fellow Slavs
despite Yeltsin’s huffing and puffing
o NATO’s new humanitarian militarism in
Kosovo

oConsequences: Fall of Milosevic in 2000 and

hand over to War Crimes Tribunal; Died before
verdict could be reached in 2006; quasi-
independence for Kosovo; undermining of UN
and international law.
Big Brother Unleashed on the World
o Clinton’s second term was laden with
unilateral militaristic foreign policy acts that
could not be checked or countered.
o ‘Humanitarian’ cruise missile strikes on Iraq to
protect Saddam’s suspected genocidal attack on
Kurds (August 1996); bombing of nothern Iraq
for four days (December 1998) to “degrade” Iraq’s
ability to manufacture WMD; No UNSC
sanction for use of force.
o Operation Infinite Reach (August 1998)
missile strikes on Afghanistan and Sudan in
retaliation against the US embassy bombings in
East Africa
o Anti-Westernism and the early challenge of
the International Islamic Front for “Jihad
Against Jews and Crusaders”

o Bin Laden’s case- why did US forces

permanently station themselves in the Holy
Lands after the Gulf War?; failure of Oslo
Accords and the onset of the Al Aqsa intifada

o Withholding US dues to the UN as a further

means of eroding IOs and international law.
Corporate Globalisation and Backlash
o Buzzword and fancy term of the 1990s; a fait
accompli after the collapse of communism, not
before; Why?

o “Rule of finance” of the roaring 90s; Clinton

continued Reaganomics for American MNCs by
pressing for free trade, movement of capital and
opening of developing country markets

o Burden of debt, SAPs felt in the form of

denial of social services to the poor in the
Global South and huge income inequalities;
Jubilee 2000 campaign to waive all developing
country debts; sweatshops and international
division of labour- keys to sustaining
globalisation

o Anti-globalisation mass protests in Seattle

(WTO ministerial, 1999) and Montreal (G-8
meeting, 2000); world public opinion
increasingly against anti-Americanisation and
pro-rich policies of world bodies

o Asian Financial Crisis opened search for

alternative Asian institutions to move out of
IMF-World Bank models of growth
Nuclear Proliferation & Fallouts of
Genocide
o Iraq, India, Pakistan and North Korea were brought
under the miscroscope of ‘nonproliferation
Ayatollahs’ in Washington; Clinton made non-
proliferation a cornerstone of US foreign policy;
Why? Anxiety to perpetuate unipolarity

o Blair House Talks- Clinton’s mediation in the fourth

India-Pakistan war over Kargil, July 1999, driven by
fears of nuclear war and its management

o Interahamwe diaspora in central Africa and “Africa’s

first world war” in the Congo as a consequence (1998-
2003); 8 countries and 25 armed groups got involved;
5.4 million casualties- the worst war since WWII ; a
“continental catastrophe”

o Hopes of universal shift to liberal democracy

fading- end of ‘transitology’- many transitions were
frozen or reversed- China, Burma, Zimbabwe, whole
of Central Asia

o After its “end” in 1991, history had restarted- anti-

capitalist globalisation and anti-democratic
tendencies were back in the reckoning