How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Engler
Publisher: Nation Books
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 20689
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 1568583656
Dewey Decimal Number: 337
EAN: 9781568583655
ASIN: 1568583656
Publication Date: April 7, 2008
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Product Description
A debate is taking place over what values should define the international order. For global elites, it is a debate about how to rule the world: a conflict between one vision of global order based on U.S. empire and another based on an expanding, corporate-controlled global economy. These visions are not entirely distinct. How to Rule the World explains how they overlap and also how, at critical moments, they clash with one another. The book is written, however, not from the perspective of power, but from the perspective of those who believe the world should be governed according to principles of democratic participation and self-determination. Mark Engler explains how the Bush administration has reshaped globalization in ways that will affect us for years to come. Such changes have created a setting that few protesters in Seattle or elsewhere could have foreseen: Global trade talks are collapsing. International institutions that drew protests, like the IMF and the World Bank, face uncertain futures. Moreover, U.S. unilateralism has created international divides that endanger the future progress of the type of multilateral globalization that thrived throughout the 1990s.
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Important Reading for Changing Times June 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Engler's ideas are intelligent, interesting, and extremely relevant. His style is very clear and accessible. "How to Rule the World" is highly recommended reading for anyone concerned about US foreign policy and the global economy.
Harbinger of the new world April 17, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Mr. Engler describes the efforts of the greatest economic engine in the world (still), known to many as the United States, to determine and control the future of developing countries, whether by cloaked capitalism (Clinton-Blair third way neo-liberalism) or fiat (G.W.Bush aka Teddy Roosevelt). But, as he documents, that effort is failing, whatever its motivation, as the United States loses control not only of its economic fiefdoms in South and Latin America but of its own population, as its efforts to control the world incur domestic debt and keep its own middle class stagnant and the poor yet more impoverished. Like the history of its predecessors, the British, French, Dutch and Flemish empires, it is a modern ride on the Appian Way with the real reasons for the fall of the empire explained, unlike that other book which explained every battle of the Roman Empire but left the reader wondering why it actually failed. As with Americans, new to this outcome, the Brits and others have yet to acknowledge their diminished, yet mostly comfortable status as now just a nation. But Americans, unused to their diminished supermacy, are certainly feeling its effects.
Mr Engler looks at the details, the intracacies of finance and their implications for the target countries, but his thesis is the nature of a changing world where economic development and, moreover, its native control, in the Southern American hemisphere (Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Boliva, Cuba) engenders independence and dooms (despite the WTO and the World Bank) a century of American hegemony. His discussion of debt cancellation, the H&R Block of international finance, more than his other examples, reveals the vulnerability of North American attempts to control fledgling South American governments. While Engler's focus is the popular movements in Central and South America, he does consider the East, never under the American thumb, but quarantined by the West, with China now holding most of America's debt the United States incurrs trying to keep its power everywhere. Our economic dependence upon the East that the Unites States has never had to entertain in a marketplace it had always exploited, but now readily accepts, whatever the consequences, as long as a buck can be made does not bode well for capital owners of the homeland. Oh, it must make those bulwarks of British Imperialism, the last vultures of the underdeveloped world, just shudder the thought of those despicable yellow people in implicit control. They and we can commisserate over our oriental tea.
Oh, you can bet there will be consequences. And Engler, knowing that the closer one gets to an issue, the more one loses the luxury of unbridled ideology, takes issue with the conclusions of commentators and analysts, both right and left, providing a studied guide to where the road may lead in the deep, deep woods of the twenty-first century.
Essential Reading for Understanding the World April 14, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
This book is both terrific and important -- crisply written, sophisticated but accessible, and extremely valuable for progressives in the United States who want to reanimate the global justice movement here.
First and foremost, Engler persuasively argues that the Bush administration has pursued a policy of unilateralist, nationalistic, and militarized "imperial globalization" that differs from the "corporate globalization" model of the Clinton years. Doing so, Engler pleads that we recognize differences of opinion and strategy -- and the opportunities these fissures and tensions create -- among global elites. The key question Engler poses is: as the Bush model runs aground, will we simply go back to the globalization of the 80s and 90s, or can there be alternatives? A lot of evidence suggests that there is a real chance to develop alternatives: many Democrats now oppose neo-liberal free trade; more importantly, there has been, in the years since 9-11, a tremendous rollback of neo-liberalism in the Global South. Engler educates us about these alternatives, and challenges us to revitalize the global justice movement based on an informed understanding of recent trends, crises within the pro-globalization community, and the activism in the Global South.
Written with the precision of a scholar, the flair of a journalist, and the heart of an activist, this book is vital reading for so many communities: academics, policy makers, activists, and anyone who wants an up-to-date account of the state of the global economy. I can't recommend it more strongly.
Jeremy Varon
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