why does the Western world persist in viewing other nations as 'barbarians at the gate'?

Paul Rogers takes NATO to task for its 'them and us' perspective. A much needed criticism.

I love the UN

"In fact, while the UN could certainly do with reform – which for most observers would begin with radical surgery of the human-resources department – it is easy to forget that the reason most of the world loves the organisation and the American right hates it is not necessarily because of what it “does,” but because of what it stands for, and the global order that has been crystallising around it.

The UN has evolved from a group of military victors into a truly global organisation, under whose auspices there have been tremendous steps forward towards forging a rule-based global society. While the organisation has provided the framework for those developments, it is the member-states with their adherence to the conventions and treaties that have made the difference.

Despite the worst conservative fears, and the naïve hopes of some internationalists, the UN is not, and never will be a world government. Indeed no one who has seen it in operation close up would want it to be. But it is a crucial part of a cooperative world."

http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-UN/reform_2836.jsp

more on globalisation . . . .

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This is a very interestng article on how small developing countries should avoid competing drectly with larger, Westernised institutions and governments and, instead, engge in symbiotic relationships emphasising their natural territorial and cultural assets. It seems sensible to me that developing countries should spare themselves the social and environmental trauma of industrialisation, a la China / The Philippines / Nigeria, and move straight into the service- and knowledge- economies in which they might compete on a level footing with the West.

Merril Stevenson is also a bint

Her drivelling endorsement of globalisation is thoroughly one-sided and lacks any sort of objective analysis of its costs to the peasants being paid 80c a day by Nike in The Philippines. It also ignores the cost to future generations who will have to deal with the peasant's irate descendants who have fought their way out of poverty and into semi-industrialisation and can suddenly learn how to make use of such primitive tools as economics, politics and resource management to exact revenge upon their former repressors. Only a crass ignoramus of a Briton can go raving about the wonders of imperialism when our own nation's bloody history in the field is detailed down to the last child-slave, forced-concubine, razed village and stolen natural resource.

Worse still is her gushing enthusiasm for the state of the British Economy:

"Britain got its economic act together just as globalisation was accelerating, in the late 1980s. It has managed to catch and ride the current wave successfully, selling the world financial and business services where once it sold cotton textiles and machines."

I believe that a more accurate statement would be "selling brutal dictatorships advanced jet fighters, military trucks and stun batons to be used on defenceless civilians whilst paying the customer's representatives fat bribes for the privilege".

Please do not get me confused with some balaclava'd anti-globalisation thug smashing the window of a McDonalds. I am very aware that seedy capitalism is the dominant economic paradigm in the Western world and there is little chance to change this with 75% of the money inthe world in the hands of those who profit from such a situation. However democracy is still the dominant political paradigm and it has the power to bring such corrupt and nefarious dealings to account. See my links to voting reform, compulsory voting, Fair Trade and environmental economics. Only Tony stands in the way.

I find it frustrating to have to awake every day to a nation dominated by people who either aren't aware of their own potential to change the world, or- worse still- don't care.


Additional

This article in the Economist gets it right. Merril Stevenson actually links to it in her article as if, in associating herself with a well balanced and written article, her own waffle might somehow be better received. Flippin' scoggin.