Mark T. Berger

After the Third World? History, destiny and the fate of Third Worldism

The idea of the Third World, which is usually traced to the late 1940s or early 1950s, was increasingly used to try and generate unity and support among an emergent group of nation-states whose governments were reluctant to take sides in the Cold War. These leaders and governments sought to displace the ‘East–West’ conflict with the ‘North–South’ conflict. The rise of Third Worldism in the 1950s and 1960s was closely connected to a range of national liberation projects and specific forms of regionalism in the erstwhile colonies of Asia and Africa, as well as the former mandates and new nation-states of the Middle East, and the ‘older’ nation-states of Latin America. Exponents of Third Worldism in this period linked it to national liberation and various forms of Pan-Asianism, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Africanism and Pan-Americanism. The weakening or demise of the first generation of Third Worldist regimes in the 1960s and 1970s coincided with or was followed by the emergence of a second generation of Third Worldist regimes that articulated a more radical, explicitly socialist, vision. A moderate form of Third Worldism also became significant at the United Nations in the 1970s: it was centred on the call for a New International Economic Order (nieo). By the 1980s, however, Third Worldism had entered into a period of dramatic decline. With the end of the Cold War, some movements, governments and commentators have sought to reorient and revitalise the idea of a Third World, while others have argued that it has lost its relevance. This introductory article provides a critical overview of the history of Third Worldism, while clarifying both its constraints and its appeal. As a world-historical movement, Third Worldism (in both its first and second generation modalities) emerged out of the activities and ideas of anti-colonial nationalists and their efforts to mesh highly romanticised interpretations of pre-colonial traditions and cultures with the utopianism embodied by Marxism and socialism specifically, and ‘Western’ visions of modernisation and development more generally. Apart from the problems associated with combining these different strands, Third Worldism also went into decline because of the contradictions inherent in the process of decolonisation and in the new international politico-economic order, in the context of the changing character, and eventual end, of the global political economy of the Cold War.

Lineages of liberalism and miracles of modernisation: The World Bank, the East Asian trajectory and the international development debate

Until recently the World Bank, arguably the most prestigious and one of the most powerful producers of international development knowledge, played an important role in encouraging the perception that the East Asian trajectory was a veritable miracle of capitalist development. This article begins with a brief discussion of the changes in the World Banks understanding of development over the past 30 or 40 years. This is followed by an examination of the Banks efforts to accommodate the East Asian trajectory within the dominant Anglo-American narrative on international development. It is argued that, in the context of the shifting contours of the international political economy and of important changes to the dominant international discourse on development, the World Bank has played a crucial role in domesticating the East Asian Miracle to the dominant liberal narrative of progress and in facilitating the wider reinvention of liberalism in the post-1945 period.

The break-up of Indonesia? Nationalisms after decolonisation and the limits of the nation-state in post-cold war Southeast Asia

One noteworthy feature of the political crisis in Indonesia, which followed the Asian financial crisis of 1997 was the speed with which the collapse of the Suharto government was subsumed by a wider crisis of the Indonesian nation-state. One aspect of this crisis is the strengthening of secessionist movements in several regions of Indonesia, calling into question the countrys national boundaries, themselves a legacy of the Dutch colonial era. This article examines the tensions in the nation-building efforts of the Indonesian state by focusing on the three territories where secessionist movements have been strongest: East Timor, which has already successfully broken away from Indonesia, and Irian Jaya and Aceh, where long-standing secessionist movements experienced significant growth in the aftermath of the resignation of President Suharto on 21 May 1998. Our analysis emphasises that these secessionist movements arose in direct response to the ways in which the Indonesian state, especially during the Suharto period, went about the tasks of nation-building. In particular, each movement was to a large degree fuelled by brutal and indiscriminate state violence. At the same time, each has been greatly affected by global trends of decolonisation, the Cold War and its aftermath. The distinct timing and manner of each territorys incorporation into the Indonesian nation-state has had a profound influence on the character of, and appeals made by, each movement, as well as on their prospects for gaining support from the wider international system.

Decolonisation, Modernisation and Nation-Building: Political Development Theory and the Appeal of Communism in Southeast Asia, 1945–1975

Modernisation theory and political development theory played a key role in the formalisation of the study of Southeast Asia, while the dramatic transitions from colonies to nation-states in the region and the deepening war in Vietnam were also pivotal to the rise and transformation of modernisation theory. This article provides a critical historical overview of the rise and elaboration of theories of political development and nation-building between 1945 and 1975.

The nation-state and the challenge of global capitalism

With the end of the Cold War, economic policies (grounded in romantic conceptions of laissez-faire and validated by neoclassical economics) and political prescriptions (based on the idealisation of representative democracy and legitimated by liberal political science) have emerged as crucial elements in a powerful global discourse on development and modernity. This introductory article argues that a central weakness of the dominant development discourse that emerged after 1945 was the way in which (in the context of decolonisation and the consolidation of the nation-state system), the nation-state was enshrined as the key unit of analysis and praxis. Between the mid-1940s and the mid-1970s the dominant development discourse was grounded in the assumption that nation-states were homogenous and natural units of a wider international politico-economic order and that state-mediated national development could, should and would lead to economic, and eventually even political, outcomes beneficial to, or at least in the best interests of, virtually all citizens. In the post-1945 era the nation-state was presented as a constitutive element of capitalist (and socialist) modernity. However, in the late 1970s and early 1980s the emergent globalisation project reconfigured the role of the state and transformed the dominant idea of development. The state-guided national development projects that emerged, or were consolidated, between the 1940s and the 1970s were deeply contradictory even at their zenith, but they have now been increasingly challenged and/or dismantled in the context of the rise of the globalisation project. The article concludes, however, that globalisation also brings with it the promise that a growing array of progressive organisations can build, or are starting to build, the networks that will allow them to move beyond the limitations of the nation-state and the nation-state system, and to pursue democracy and development in the increasingly globalised political terrain of the post-cold war era.

The Long War: insurgency, counterinsurgency and collapsing states

Abstract This introductory article provides the context for the contemporary debate about insurgency, counterinsurgency and collapsing states taking place against the backdrop of what originated as the ‘global war on terror’ (gwot) and is now increasingly being characterised as ‘the Long War’. The Long War and the gwot are often represented as a ‘new’ era in warfare and US geopolitics, despite the fact that, rhetorically, George W Bush and other administration officials have on occasion invoked the Second World War as analogous to the Long War. This article argues that the Long War is new in important respects, but it also bears many similarities to the Cold War. A key similarity between the Cold War and the Long War is the way in which insurgency and counterinsurgency are seen primarily in the context of inter-state rivalry in which the critical local or regional dynamics of revolution and counter-revolution are neglected. In this context US policy makers and their allies have again erroneously applied a ‘grand strategy’ that suits the imperatives of conventional military and geopolitical thinking rather than engaging with what is a much more variegated array of problems facing the changing global order. The Long War is ostensibly a war against various non-state movements, networks and actors, and is even represented as such by the Pentagon and the White House. However, the overall approach to the Long War has continued to fall back on the conventional ‘American Way of War’ that produces more problems than it solves.

Beyond state-building: Global governance and the crisis of the nation-state system in the 21st century

The conclusion to this special issue reiterates some of the wider themes sketched out at the beginning and in the various contributions. At the same time it also foreshadows ways to move beyond nation-building or statebuilding as they are presently constituted. In contrast to nation-building in the cold war era, the instrumentalities available in the new age of statebuilding (as it is increasingly termed) are far more limited than they were in the decades immediately after 1945. In the context of the deepening crisis of the UN-centred nation-state system and the wider US-centred post-cold war and post-9/11 era, efforts at state-building in Iraq (which currently involves a major US occupation force) and elsewhere (where the USA or the international presence generally, and the geopolitical significance more specifically, is less profound) are more constrained than at any previous point in the history of the post-1945 nation-state system. As suggested at the beginning of this special issue, there are many trends that define the post-cold war era. One that is of particular importance in relation to statebuilding is that the contemporary world order can be characterised as having completed the long and uneven transition from exhausted colonialism and we have now entered a new era of exhausted internationalism. Thus, the prospects for successful US-led nation-building in the Middle East and elsewhere are the most limited they have ever been. Also, as suggested at the outset and generally confirmed by the contributions to this special issue, the focus needs to shift from quantitative approaches to nationand state-building, which either ignore the wider historical context or assume that the right set of strategies can succeed regardless of the particular context. There is instead a profound need to look for and articulate new critical creative paths to achieving prosperity and peace in the post-cold war era.

The Paradoxes of Paramountcy: Regional Rivalries and the Dynamics of American Hegemony in East Asia

It has become increasingly commonplace to describe the United States as hegemonic. And yet, despite Americas dominant position at a number of levels strategic, political-economic and ideational, there are plainly limits to US hegemony. These limits and the enduring strengths of American hegemony are revealed quite clearly in East Asia. This paper critically assesses a number of theories of hegemony, and argues that the concept continues to provide a useful way of conceptualising Americas evolving relationship with East Asia. Theories of hegemony can, with appropriate caveats, also help us to understand the limits to Chinese and Japanese power in the region; two countries that are routinely cited as potential hegemonic rivals.

States of nature and the nature of states: The fate of nations, the collapse of states and the future of the world

Abstract This article is an effort to advance the political and intellectual debate on the theory and practice of nation building in an era of collapsing states. I assume at the outset that we are in the midst of a crisis of the nation-state system as a whole and, thus of the vast majority of its constituent polities. This is not a problem that can be addressed by technocratic prescriptions for the creation or stabilisation of particular collapsing or failing nation-states or the rehabilitation of the nation-state system as a whole. In this context the debate about nation building needs to be carried well beyond its current terms of reference. Only by dramatically deepening and broadening the current level of both commitment and understanding of what is at stake can we begin to come to grips with the fate of nations, the collapse of states and the future of the world.

Keeping the World Safe for Primary Colors: Area Studies, Development Studies, International Studies, and the Vicissitudes of Nation-Building

Abstract This paper focuses on the theory and practice of nation-building. This is done primarily in an effort to explicate how area studies (AS), development studies (DS), and international studies (IS) have been, and continue to be, embedded in international security and economic/development policy processes and questions of national sovereignty, international relations, and global governance. The central argument is that at this world-historical juncture the nation-state system (and the pursuit of modernity via the nation-state) is one of the key obstacles to the achievement of a genuinely emancipatory modernity in an era of global oligopolistic capitalism centered on US hegemony. The analysis followed here challenges the way in which the nation-state, and the nation-state system, remain central to and continue to be routinized and naturalized by the dominant discourses within AS, DS, and IS. Furthermore, with the end of the Cold War, the boundaries between AS, DS, and IS, and their relationship to international relations and other disciplines, have become increasingly blurred. In this context, it is argued that the future of AS and DS lies in their convergence on IS. Furthermore, if IS is to gain any purchase as a set of critical practices and structures and the study of nation-building (a central theme in IS) is to gain a critical conceptual edge, they both need to be dramatically reformulated. IS generally and nation-building more specifically need to be recast in ways that carry them well beyond their current conceptual and policy frameworks. Only in this way will IS and the study and practice of nation-building make a contribution to furthering global emancipation, social prosperity, and political stability. Este artículo se enfoca en la teoría y práctica de la creación de una nación. Esto se ha efectuado principalmente como un esfuerzo para explicar cómo han sido y continúan siendo los estudios del área (AS, por sus siglas en inglés), los estudios de desarrollo (DS, por sus siglas en inglés) y los estudios internacionales (IS, por sus siglas en inglés) integrados en la seguridad internacional, los procesos de política económica y de desarrollo, cuestiones de soberanía nacional, relaciones internacionales y autoridad global. El argumento central consiste en que en este momento histórico mundial, el sistema nación-estado (y la búsqueda de la modernidad por medio de la nación-estado) es uno de los obstáculos claves para el logro de una modernidad genuinamente emancipadora en una era de capitalismo oligopolístico global con base en la hegemonía de los Estados Unidos. El análisis que se sigue aquí desafía la manera en que la nación-estado y el sistema de nación-estado se mantienen centralizados y continúan siendo rutinizados y nacionalizados por los contextos dominantes dentro de los estudios del área (AS), de desarrollo (DS) e internacionales (IS). Además, con el fin de la guerra fría, las barreras entre los estudios AS, DS e IS y su relación con las relaciones internacionales (IR, por sus siglas en inglés) y otras disciplinas, también han llegado a ser cada vez más confusas. En este contexto, se plantea que el futuro de los estudios AS y DS yacen en su convergencia en los estudios internacionales. Además, si los estudios internacionales son para ganar cualquier adquisición como un conjunto de prácticas y estructuras críticas y el estudio de la creación de una nación (un tema central dentro de los estudios internacionales) es para ganar una ventaja conceptual crítica, entonces ambos necesitan reformularse dramáticamente. Generalmente, los estudios internacionales y más específicamente la creación de una nación necesitan remodelarse en formas que los lleven más allá de sus marcos conceptuales y políticos actuales. Sólo de esta manera, los estudios internacionales y el estudio y práctica de la creación de una nación contribuirán para fomentar la emancipación, la prosperidad social y la estabilidad política global.