In a
philosophy class I took while studying abroad on the Pacific Program (Allie
George was there!!!), we examined the solvency and moral grounds of
international monetary and trade agreements between developing and developed
countries. While meeting in our air-conditioned conference rooms at westernized
resorts in Fiji (a severely impoverished country under the control of a de
facto military dictatorship), we discussed the intentions and consequences of
the developed world’s attempts to grow economically by seeking to support (manipulate?)
and engage (exploit?) the nascent markets of developing countries.
In my paper for that class, I wrote about how fragile such
artificial and contrived economic support is to the native economies. I drew
upon literature to submit that such schemes, over time, make the developing
nation dependent upon the capricious charity of the developed world; if a
developing nation wishes to be taken seriously, scholars argue, it must be
willing to participate in an international economy that is not sustained by
such loans and aids. Even more, by accepting such munificence from other
countries, developing nations give up power and influence, and developing
nations are often shut out of the very negations that concern them. What
results is a status quo of power that lies almost completely in the developed
world.
As for
the developed world, whose citizens wish to take actions against global
poverty, actions designed to be humanitarian are often wasteful or
counterproductive; one legal scholar suggests that “it is the height of
naiveté… to believe that the government should intervene in the trade process
but that political intervention will not backfire against their interests”.
The
Balkans has not been immune to such international policy failure. In exploring
the historic roots of these problems, I came across an article that insisted
that these problems are the modern manifestations of imperialism. In my class
and in my paper, we commonly used the IMF as an example agent in these
international constructs. The IMF regularly grants emergency loans to countries
that cannot find a private lender to fund their existence; in exchange for the
financial resources, the IMF requires that the developing nation implement a
set of policies. However, it is regularly argued that the IMF is unable to
effectively evaluate what actions should be taken on a local level because they
are unfamiliar with the country’s economic history, conditions, cultures, and
environments. Though the government itself is readily equipped with such
insight, the recipient governments are
sacrificing policy autonomy in exchange for funds, which can lead to public
resentment of the local leadership for accepting and enforcing the IMF
conditions.
Some articles that I read—though notably Marxist—discuss how
the international meddling that has occurred has crushed the chances for the Balkan
working class to ever develop into an independent and sustainable consumer
class. To quote one:
“In a word, for the past 19 years, Bosnia has been like a
colony of the EU. Under its control, the formerly state-owned industries have
been privatized. Workers' control (which nominally existed in Yugoslavia) has
been all but abolished, and the country has been turned into a playground for
Western imperialism. Just to give one example, 85% of the country's financial
sector is controlled by Austrian banks, and only 3% by Bosnian ones. Meanwhile,
the standard of living is still significantly lower than it was when Tito's
rule ended in the 1980s, the country's industrial base has been almost
completely obliterated and unemployment has reached a spectacular 44.6%. IMF
loans are now a vital source of income for the country.”
No comments:
Post a Comment