Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making by David Rothkopf

Author:David Rothkopf [Rothkopf, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2008-03-18T07:00:00+00:00

THE GLOBAL NETWORK OF ANTIGLOBALISTS

Bill McDonough sat thoughtfully in his office at Merrill Lynch, a modern suite in a building that towers above the wound in lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center used to be. “There is a growing view,” he remarked to me, “that the modern economy is benefiting the more successful at the expense of the less fortunate. In the United States, the lower half of income distribution has not been keeping up.

“I believe that in all societies, clearly in democracies where the electorate can change the government at the next election, more attention has to be paid to making it clear to all the people that they too can benefit, or at least that the educational system gives their children that opportunity. That is the American dream. But even in less democratic societies, governments govern over the longer term with the consent of the governed. If not, revolutions take place.

“In guiding globalization, government leaders, central bankers, and leaders of the business community simply have to do a better job of taking those actions needed to have all the people believe that the system benefits all.”

Former U.S. ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke, one of the most distinguished and respected of the foreign policy leaders within the Democratic Party, observed that the consequences of the actions of the global elite have produced what might be characterized as an antiglobalist elite. These antiglobalists are not only far removed from the worlds of London, Wall Street, and all the makeshift international networks that fill the global governance void on behalf of the most empowered countries and economic entities—they actively oppose them. They “have nothing to do with that world of what you call the ‘superclass,’” Holbrooke told me. “One of the points [Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad made in New York according to people who saw him was his attack on the UN as being the Western creation. And when somebody at the Council on Foreign Relations meeting at which he spoke said to him, ‘You know, all these countries in the UN oppose you,’ he said, ‘Wait a second. I just came from Havana [the latest meeting of the newly revitalized Non-Aligned Movement]. I was with 125 nation leaders who all denounce you guys.’ So I mention that because there are different elites. This other group is the anti-Davos crowd. They’re the antiglobalization people … So, yes, I agree with you that there are these elites and there are these networks, but they have also triggered the creation of these antinetworks.”

At the core of the “anti-network” is a small group of leaders, linked by many shared characteristics and attitudes though they come from widely different regions of the world. They might be characterized as “nationalists,” or opponents of the United States, or critics of Western-led globalization. They include Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chávez, and Vladimir Putin. Each has fought or been trained to fight for his country: Ahmadinejad was a soldier in Iran’s war against Iraq; Chávez is a military man by training; Putin was a career KGB operative.

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