World War III came to an end with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It buried the Cold War and existing communism, at the same time that the Soviet Union drew back defeated from Afghanistan. Today, World War IV has brought down the Neoliberal wall, the walls of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and its military arm: the Pentagon. For many international analysts it is the long beginning of a foretold ending. If not of capitalism that for some is unmovable and unquestionable, then of the globalization of neoliberalism. For others it is the deepening of contradictions of neoliberalism or the possibilities of taking advantage of the transition to construct another more just and humane world project. One world for everyone.

For those that are hooked on the neoliberal model, this war gives the opportunity to save capitalism from its suicide, from its worst worldwide recession, and to reinforce and redefine the financial corporativism of Wall Street. For now, among the immediate effects that we can observe is the acceleration of the neoliberal tendency: riches concentrated more and more in the hands of the few, in fewer transnational corporations in each of the branches of the world economy. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, companies, stores and businesses have closed and there is a crisis in the airline, bank and financial sectors. Only the largest companies will profit and they will swallow up the rest. The unemployed, refugees, dead and hungry have increased rapidly in the last several weeks.

Historically in times of world transition as the present, confusion and darkness reign above objective long-term consequences that bring the world closer to a world war. Everything depends on how the political and economic forces are able to reposition themselves in the world, and this is defined in the unfolding of the conflict whose transition can last ten or fifteen years. From economic liberalism to the welfare model there were 15 years of transition, between the world economic recession of 1929 and the end of World War II in 1945. During this period nobody imagined the birth of two institutions and tools that would change the course of the world economy: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB).

Later, the transition from the welfare state to neoliberalism lasted another 15 years, from 1975 and the decade of the ‘80s. In the same fashion this took place amidst wars, violence, the rise of opposition guerrilla forces, and finally the proliferation of military dictatorships – supported by the CIA and the government of the United States that facilitated the transition and application of neoliberal policies. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund applied these same policies through so-called Structural Adjustments, as US hegemony over world economics grew. In all these transitions, the military industry has appeared to reactivate the economy and fortify the interests of the great transnational capital.

Thirty years of neoliberalism have passed, and it is now in its highest point of crisis, announced even before September 11. The large worldwide mobilizations against globalization and the world economic crisis announced their own catastrophes. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), one billion people in the world were already unemployed or underemployed. Germany and Japan are the industrialized countries with the worst problems, as they account for 100,000 workers fired monthly. Among the transnational companies that have eliminated the most workers is General Electric with a cut of 75,000 workers, Chrysler with 25,000, Coca Cola with 6,000 and Xerox with 5,200. In the last 25 years of neoliberal economics, the 500 largest companies of the world have fired 5 million workers. All the international organizations, from the IMF to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) affirm that the US, Japan and the European Union were already on the path to an inevitable recession that would affect the entire world. In the US, consumer confidence is at its lowest levels in the last 15 years, and the accumulated losses of the stock market of New York are the most severe of the last 30 years.

On September 11, 7000 innocent people of approximately 60 nationalities lost their lives due to terrorist acts. It is the first time since 1812 that the US has been attacked on its own territory. These deaths are now added to the list of thousands of innocent victims that have perished due to the many terrorist actions taken by diverse groups and governments in the world. But this event has changed the direction and the social, political, economic and military conditions of the entire planet. The US is now directing all its military might with the most sophisticated war machines, billions of dollars and thousands of troops directed toward Afghanistan to find one man in more than 6 billion inhabitants of the world responsible for the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, where a handful of men with a passport and a knife became suicide hijackers that have turned the world upside down.

We are in a world war with worldwide effects. But who loses and who wins? What are the characteristics that make this war a Fourth World War? The theories differ, are manipulated, changed or matured. Brzezinkski, Giddens, Huntington, Soros, Friedman and Fukymana, as other intellectuals of the system, justify or launch their theories about the end of the world, the “clash of civilizations”, the crisis of “global capitalism”, the “Third Way”, “crisis of democracies”, etc.  Philosophy, sociology, economy, ethics and even religion are entering a crisis even more severe. Not even the bishops of the world that now meet in Rome, are in agreement on how to classify and identify the killings that are now taking place in Afghanistan, and the ethical dimensions of the conflict. Is the violence and death inevitable to bring justice? How long can the spending of millions of dollars in arms be justified while millions are starving? Can humanitarian aid in the context of war fuel more violence? How far can Islam, the Catholic Church, Judaism and other religions support this war before they begin to vigorously condemn it? These and a thousand other questions arise in the context of this absurd war. At any rate, what we can prove is that not the existing capitalism, nor communism, nor Islam, when expressed in fundamentalist or terrorist terms, have been able to resolve the problems that bear upon humanity now. And that religions can be as fundamentalist or terrorist as politics, or can be used for this purpose.

The war paralyzes trade and air, land and sea trade routes. Financial transactions are also paralyzed, as the productive and speculative investments on the stock market that lose millions of dollars a day, depend on a confidence level that war annihilates. Only giant companies survive and accelerate fusions, buyouts, and other predatory actions. Governments of the world are reorienting their spending toward security and military defense. International monetary exchange rises and falls with respect to the dollar, which provokes commercial insecurity and instability. Countries and companies that depend on external trade lose. The ones that will win in this conflict are those that produce goods to feed or maintain the war: some oil, energy, steel, and gold producers, textile producers who produce military uniforms, companies that produce chemicals and chemical derivatives among others. Insurance companies lose and others raise their rates and profits. Commercial airlines pass the costs along to the flyers. Drug consumption rises (US is the number one drug consumer in the world), and prices fluctuate. Some drug cartels lose, others gain spaces in the market; they look for new routes faced with global militarization and the war against Afghanistan that is the principal producer of opium in the world, and the principal supplier of heroin in Europe.

The war uncorks complex and varied economic and political interests. According to some analysts, many companies knew about the attacks for the suspicious links between important politicians and businessmen, and for the changes in the stock market that occurred days before the attacks. At any rate, in the Twin Towers the secret files of the CIA were destroyed, gold ingots were buried, as were secret documents of all kinds that belonged to the most powerful transnational companies and banks on the earth. In the rubble, handcuffed arms were found. This attack provoked a plummeting of tourism in the US. New York stores were closed or empty in the first days after the attack. Thousands of Latinos and Caribbean nationals that worked in the basements of the economy as sweepers, vendors, waiters, cooks, painters, masons, etc. are the most vulnerable to unemployment now.

Relationships of power and world alliances change, some polarize and others grow stronger; some form today and are broken tomorrow; others do not know how to accommodate themselves on the new world stage. New actors arise and others disappear. Little by little clues appear in diverse analyses and information that help to unearth the deeper causes of this war. Clues can be founding issues that relate to drug trafficking, the interests of the military industry, the world economic crisis, the control of gas and petroleum, and even the problems of the political elite of the US, and the reaction to the terrorist attacks that achieved maximum escalation. A little bit of everything. In these conflicts, patriotism or religious or cultural vindication do not exist; there are no nationalities or loyalties beyond profit, the axis that articulates tactical alliances or world strategies. The war will be used to temporarily lift some economic blockades that the US has against some countries, as long as they sign on to the cause. Once their mission is achieved, the US will hang them the next day. It will also be the moment to raise some walls and blockades against other enemies.

The governments of the world are taking advantage of this conflict to eliminate their internal enemies. Terrorists are everywhere. If, for the US, this war is the opportunity to justify the annihilation of other historic enemies, it is equally so for other national governments. Any movement in favor of peace, against the war or against neoliberalism, is catalogued as terrorist. For Spain, it is time to ask for help and to eliminate ETA, and for Colombia to eliminate FARC, for Mexico the EPR, ERPI and EZLN, and thusly each country begins to update their inventory of internal enemies. The US is ready to lend a hand to the “democratic” governments of the world and to relocate and reinforce their military bases that are distributed across the planet. Anyone who questions Bush and his justification for the war will be isolated, threatened, frightened.

The agenda of the circuit of neoliberal globalization will be modified. At the outset, the annual meeting of the IMF and the WB that would take place in Washington at the end of September was suspended. Government, multilateral and all types of meetings, events and congresses have been suspended, as will be the negotiations of the WTO programmed for the month of November in Qatar, Muslim territory surrounded by war and near the region where the US now is maintaining troops within Arab territory. This antidemocratic, authoritarian and monarchical government was asked by the “democratic” governments of the world to help protect them from the anti-globalization and anti-WTO protesters in November. Paradoxically, the government of Qatar is host to the television offices of Al Jazeera, who has broadcasted to the world the threats of the Taliban government and from Osama bin Laden. It is odd: authoritarian regimes sometimes help and later hinder the “democratic” governments, and they have to be terminated.

The military industry is now receiving the most benefit. Increases are noted in the dispatch and production of military equipment, tanks, planes, vehicles, helicopters, aircraft carriers, submarines, armaments, grenades, intelligence apparatus and everything else needed for war. The US does not sell the Mideast medicine or food, but they do sell them the arms they need. The more than 11 billion dollars annually that the government of the US budgets for the war against terrorism that failed in this mission, are now billions more. The North American government has unleashed its military might with the most sophisticated war machines and thousands of soldiers on Afghanistan. They have dispatched all their special divisions: the SEALs of the Special Forces Unit, the Rangers of the Army, Delta forces, psychological operations, and special units in chemical warfare among others.

Society militarizes during the war. Soldiers, police and governmental agents invade the streets and airports. Millions of dollars are destined toward security now. We are not far from seeing new military dictatorships or the imposition of new governments against civil and democratic interests, as the intention of the North American government to impose in previously hated but now useful monarchy to eradicate the Taliban government of that nation of nations. The US has had to look for the consensus of North Americans and of international citizens. It has frozen bank accounts in the realm of the supposed terrorists, which has provoked a flight of capital that has worsened the crisis. Also, many people have been detained in various countries. And the US has to face its own radical groups and US terrorists on its own territory, as the case of the attack on the government building in Oklahoma, committed by a North American ex-military man in 1995.

The government of Bush has had to look for allies. It cannot sustain a war without them. He has convinced the neighboring governments of Pakistan, Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia among others to deploy their strategies, to find logistic, military and intelligence supports; to utilize their air and sea space. But many of these alliances can be lost at any moment due to other interests, or they can generate or update new regional conflicts. The US convinced NATO that the proofs presented indicate just one man guilty for the deaths: Osama bin Laden, protected by Afghanistan. For the first time in the history of NATO, created in 1949, article 51 has been applied, which defines that the attack on one of its 18 member countries is an offense to all: “to unite their forces for the collective defense.” Now all the military might of the giant world powers is in search of one man. Later the support of the European Union with another 15 countries. The same countries in a different order.

In this context and after many years and other conflicts, in this war the US had to pay its debt of millions of dollars to the UN. It has been the most indebted country in the organization, always reluctant to pay, but angry if the UN does not dance to the tune of US interests.  A few days later, the UN and its General Security Council, on which the US holds a seat, give its support to the North American government and joins the war. And from here they take us all along, as more than 180 countries are members of this organization. Days later, the UN and its leader since 1997, Kofi Annan, receive the Nobel Peace Prize for 2001, and a prize of thousands of dollars. As absurd as the whole war.

The Organization of American States knelt to US interests though the “democratic” governments of the 33 Latin American and Caribbean heads of state, except for Cuba who condemned the events of September 11 but indicated the terrorism and cynicism of the US. Up until this time, the great majority of the world governments and principal worldwide, hemispheric or regional structures have responded with economic, political or military support. If that is not a world war, what is?

Terrorism was not born in Afghanistan, but in the long history of terrorism of the US government throughout the world. Spying, invading, robbing, imposing military dictatorships. Afghanistan and other countries are following, unfortunately, the same steps. The US has done business with other terrorists, drug dealers, and military governments. When they are no longer useful, they throw them aside. Fundamentalism was not born in Afghanistan either, but in the US at the beginning of the twentieth century, when this term was used for the extremist religious movement of conservative Christians that appeared shortly before World War I. For Carlos Montemayor, the concept passed into political discourses that tend to totally disqualify the enemy; and now is identified as the spiritual or ideological position that reduces all life to a few fundamental unmovable ideologies that are not open to question.

The US government and fundamentalist Islam generate a low intensity world war. Panic has taken hold in everyday life of the society that heeds the warning of Osama bin Laden: “I swear by God that America will not live in peace until peace reigns in Palestine and until all the infidel army leaves Mohammed’s territory.” And he tosses out a death warning, especially against any North American in the world. Much of the North American population lives in a mental health crisis: psychoses, fear, depression, anguish, insecurity, sadness, desolation and insomnia. Faced with this, Mexican experts, psychologists and psychiatrists, announced a trip to New York to assist with mental health issues of the affected persons. An interest that was not expressed when thousands of indigenous in Chenhaló, Chiapas were displaced to the mountains and were psychologically affected by the terrorist acts of the paramilitaries that got away with the assassination of women, children and elders in the most brutal manner. Today, they continue to live with fear and anguish that does not allow them to recuperate the normalcy of their lives. Women and children with psychosomatic illnesses, headaches and insomnia for having witnessed the assassinations before their own eyes. Now the US people have shared in those effects of violent and terrorist acts that we should eradicate in all corners of the world.

The war has created a state of worldwide alert. After just a few days, it has claimed the lives of civilians, more than two million displaced people, and thousands could potentially die from hunger in a short time. It is a worldwide humanitarian catastrophe, as catalogued by the multilateral organisms of humanitarian aid. More than 7 million Afghans depend on humanitarian aid, and the majority are women and children, 50% of whom die before reaching 5 years.  All of them could die from hunger during the Afghan winter that begins in November. But the war polarizes and extends throughout the entire world. It is calculated that there are 1 billion 300 thousand faithful to Islam in 57 countries, that have become – in the eyes of those that support this war – suspicious of being terrorists. “Islam” is an Arab word that means “submission” or “obedience”, and shares a root with the word for “peace.” The Council of Islamic-American Relations has documented already four assassinations, 60 mosques attacked, and more than 600 incidents against Arabs or Muslims in the US, denominated as “hate crimes.” In this country there are 1,625 Muslim associations. Muslims represent 20% of the world population and 6 to 8 million of them live in the US and use the services of the Muslim Bank. If only 0.5% of the Muslims were to sign onto the “Holy War”, there would be a contingent of 6 million fundamentalists throughout the world, ready to launch attacks against the US through terrorist acts. There have already been protests of thousands of Muslims in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, etc. The Islamic countries within the Organization of the Islamic Conference recently convened and condemned the attacks on the US.

While Bush calls his operation “Enduring Freedom”, Osama bin Laden has convoked a “Holy War” against the US. This war has nothing of “holy” nor of “freedom”, though it does promise to be an “Enduring War” with profound worldwide consequences. This “Enduring War” limits the sovereignty of nations and individual and civil guarantees are fractured. The 240 airports of the US are on maximum alert with 5000 soldiers of the National Guard, NATO has sent to North America five aircraft to patrol the skies of the US. Everything is patrolled: sky, sea and land. The train stations, bus stations, subways and public spaces of the US are being guarded. Military and police have come to the streets and into public life. This scene repeats itself throughout the world. In military installations and strategic resources security has increased. This affects government resources formerly destined for social projects.

The government of Great Britain confirms that the war will last until next summer, 2002. There is enough war for a while. It is an “Enduring War.” In the month of November, Afghan winter will arrive and the temperature will go from approximately 40° C (104° F) to about –20° C (-4° F). More deaths are in store. But meanwhile there are other objectives that attack the world. The US ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, alerts that his country will attack whomever gives shelter to terrorists. On this list appear Iran, Iraq, Libya and Sudan among other nations. Certainly, neither the “Holy War” nor that of “Enduring Liberty” is the correct alternatives. Both are using psychological warfare. Bin Laden announced that North Americans “will no longer live in peace while the Muslims are not allowed to.” Restrictions to civil liberties are more and more palpable in the world: espionage, migratory control, detention of any suspicious, censorship of information, and social mobilization. In many countries of the world internal espionage is being reactivated, and even the US expects to legalize espionage of the Internet and e-mail.

The world is full of fanatics. From the fundamentalist Muslim to the fundamentalist Neoliberal that at any cost wants to impose his vision of the world in the most anti-democratic manner. For the dissenting country, there are coup d’etat and military dictatorships, economic blockades, invasions, accusations and exclusion. For any movement that wants another way and mobilizes pacifically, there is repression, jail, and accusations of being “globa-phobic terrorists.” Both fundamentalists look for justification from beyond, some because “Allah orders it” and others because “God is with us”  (the North American government).

None of those involved has shown historically that the problems of their humanity will be resolved – but rather that humanity has been the cause of problems: deaths, displaced people, human rights violations, hunger and misery throughout the world. One is as repressive as the next. Unjust both. Both invasive, colonialist, terrorist and fundamentalist. The terrorism of fundamental neoliberal globalization is also a project of domination and subordination of the transnational companies in the seven most powerful countries of the world, represented in the G-7. In the name of Allah Islam has advanced through Europe. In the name of Liberty and Democracy the US has mowed down people and governments of the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa and Asia, in oil lands in dispute, promoting its political, economic and cultural values. Some time ago, the columnist Ann Coulter of the National Review affirmed: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We should not limit ourselves to locating and punishing Hitler and his officials. Lets bomb German cities. That is war. And this is a war.” (Cited in Vertigo, No. 28)

The world is not black and white. Not Bush nor Bin. There are other worlds and civilizations such as the Hindu, Japanese, African, Latin American, Confucian, and others. The challenge in the world is to be able to live together in respect of the economic, political and cultural differences, with inclusion for the diverse identities of this complex and marvelous world of nations. Now, more than ever society should not fall into fear nor silence. It should go out into the streets to denounce the war, the massacres and any manifestation of terrorism and fundamentalism. It should delegitimize the war and reveal the traps set by its rhetoric. The World civil society should be the new prophet that announces the consequences of continuing with this war, and the proposals for a better life for the world. Because another, better world is possible.

Sources: Milenio, La Jornada, Proceso, Quehacer Político, Vértigo, Cambio, Proceso Sur, Impacto, La Crisis, Época, Economía Nacional, USA Today, UNICEF, OIT, etc.

Note: If you wish to be placed on a list to receive this English version of the Bulletin, or the Spanish, or both, please direct a request to: ciepac@laneta.apc.org and indicate whether you wish to receive the bulletin in plain text or as a Word 7 for Windows 95 attachment.

Note: If you use this information, cite the source and our email address. We are grateful to the persons and institutions who have given us their comments on these Bulletins. CIEPAC, A.C. is a non-government and non-profit organization, and your support is necessary for us to be able to continue offering you this news and analysis service. If you would like to contribute, in any amount, we would infinitely appreciate your remittance to the bank account in the name of:

CIEPAC, A.C.
Bank: Banamex
Account number: 7049672 Sucursal 386
San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México.
You will also need to use an ABA number:
BNMXMXMM

Thank you! CIEPAC

Telephone:
in México: 01 967 674 5168
from outside Mexico:: +52 967 674 5168