Articles by Immanuel Wallerstein

Source: Immanuel Wallerstein

On January 11, France’s President François Hollande sent in troops to Mali, a few immediately but then 3500, a sizeable number. The stated objective was to fight against the various Islamic fundamentalists who had taken control of northern Mali. It was what the French would call a gageure – a word that derives from gage in the sense of a bet. It basically means undertaking something very difficult to achieve. I think one might best translate it as a “risky bet” and in this case, I would say it was a very risky bet. read more

The whole world watched the latest violent conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Everyone held their breath to watch Pres. Morsi of Egypt broker the truce, which for the moment is lasting. And everyone except the Israelis praised Morsi for achieving this truce, which seemed difficult.

But what does this mean? To answer that, we have to ask ourselves what each of the four principal players hoped to win. The four players that mattered were Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, Pres. Obama, Pres. Morsi, and the Hamas leadership. Each wanted different things. read more

If we analyze the geopolitics of the Middle East, what should be the principal focus? There is little agreement on an answer, and yet it is the key question. The Israeli government has been sedulously and constantly trying to make the focus be Iran. This has been considered by most observers as an effort to divert attention from Israel’s unwillingness to pursue serious negotiations with the Palestinians.

In any case, this Israeli effort has failed, spectacularly. Netanyahu has been unable to get the U.S. government to commit to supporting an Israeli raid on Iran. And Iran’s ability to gather most of the non-Western world – including Pakistan, India, China, Palestine, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon – to the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran underlines the political impossibility of the Israeli wish to concentrate attention on Iran. read more

Source: Immanuel Wallerstein

Blowback is a term coined by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that originally meant the unintended negative consequences to a country of its own espionage operations. For example, if a secret CIA operation led to a revenge attack on U.S. individuals who were unaware of the CIA’s operation, this was considered “blowback.” But these days, many of the operations are not all that secret (for example, the U.S. use of drones in Pakistan or Yemen). And the “revenge” attacks are often publicly avowed. Nevertheless, countries don’t seem to cease engaging in such operations. read more

Source: Immanuel Wallerstein

When times are good, and the world-economy is expanding in terms of new surplus-value produced, the class struggle is muted. It never goes away, but as long as there is a low level of unemployment and the real incomes of the lower strata are going up, even if only in small amounts, social compromise is the order of the day.

But when the world-economy stagnates and real unemployment expands considerably, it means that the overall pie is shrinking. The question then becomes who shall bear the burden of the shrinkage – within countries and between countries. The class struggle becomes acute and sooner or later leads to open conflict in the streets. This is what has been happening in the world-system since the 1970s, and most dramatically since 2007. Thus far, the very upper strata (the 1%) have been holding on to their share, indeed increasing it. This means necessarily that the share of the 99% has been going down. read more

Elections in Western parliamentary systems are always about the center. The standard situation is one in which there are two dominant parties – one somewhat right of center and one somewhat left of center. There are differences between the policies these parties pursue when in office, but there are also enormous similarities. The election never reflects a profound political split. Rather, it is about recentering the center – what is to be considered the leverage point in the seesaw between the parties. read more