Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
Labor, Trade, & Finance

People’s Voices: Challenging the G20’s Agenda of Corporate Globalization, September 2009

by | Sep 24, 2009

With multiple crises affecting our world – global economy, climate change, resource depletion – we must urgently redirect the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on preparing for war. The United States is far and away the largest military spender, accounting for nearly 50% of all global military expenditures. Together, the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea spent nearly $1 trillion in 2008 on the military. And despite the current financial crisis, military spending and arms exports are on the rise.

Yet, for about one-tenth of this near-trillion dollar amount – about $90 billion a year – we can achieve more genuine security by eliminating global starvation and malnutrition, educating every child on earth, making clean water and sanitation accessible for all, and reversing the global spread of AIDS and malaria.

It is time for the G-20 to take a stand on military spending. It is time for the richest countries of the world, beginning with the United States, to take the lead in shifting military spending to human needs. The world can’t wait.

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The Virtues of Deglobalization

by , | Sep 3, 2009

The current global downturn, the worst since the Great Depression 70 years ago, pounded the last nail into the coffin of globalization. Already beleaguered by evidence that showed global poverty and inequality increasing, even as most poor countries experienced little or no economic growth, globalization has been terminally discredited in the last two years. As the much-heralded process of financial and trade interdependence went into reverse, it became the transmission belt not of prosperity but of economic crisis and collapse.

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Multilateral Money

by , | Aug 25, 2009

While U.S. investors are debating whether the financial crisis is ending, the damage is still spreading in developing countries. Countries more remote from the meltdown’s epicenter, like those in sub-Saharan Africa, did not feel the pinch immediately, but are now facing big drops in foreign investment, crashes export income due to falling commodity prices, and decreased remittances from citizens working abroad, where their jobs are the most vulnerable to the crisis. The fragility of low-income countries’ economies means that the crisis is likely to last longer and hit them harder.

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Review: ‘The Future of Global Relations’

Review: ‘The Future of Global Relations’

by , | Aug 17, 2009

The end of the Cold War ushered in a new period of unipolar American power. In this country, liberals and conservatives alike celebrated the triumph of market democracies under the leadership of the United States. The Clinton administration attempted to consolidate America’s geoeconomic power. The Bush administration attempted to consolidate America’s military and geopolitical power. And today, the Obama administration surveys the wreckage of these efforts to preserve a unipolar world. The global economy is in deep recession, and the United States is drowning under the costs of maintaining its post-Cold War empire. The chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan stands testament to the failures of our military pretensions.

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The Pursuit of True Security

by , , | Aug 13, 2009

For years the United States has used military force as a Band-Aid for a wide-range of global problems ranging from the removal of dictators to ensuring access to global trade partners. Yet it’s clear that this has not been successful. For all of the money, time, and lives we have spent to maintain a colossal international force, we are no safer. It’s time to reexamine our military involvements and change our force distributions to reflect our goal: true security.

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