The Other War:
resurgent socialism and insurgency in the age of globalization.
By Guntram Werther, Ph.D.

[Note: This essay is being co-published online with the Homeland Security Defense Coalition (USA), the Military Studies Program at Knightsbridge University (Denmark), Marquess College, London, and in non-public form with various police counter-terrorism networks. E-addresses of the public fora appear at the end of the article.]

INTRODUCTION:

Globalization was sold as a systemic ascent of freer international markets and trade regimes via liberalizing economic and political reforms. Similarly, the development trajectory of poor countries via market-friendly economic and hopefully more democratic political reforms within this globalizing environment envisioned an outcome broadly similar to our experience of market democracies in the developed West and in Asia. That is, they would be on our side.

Increasingly, that is not so.

To confront the reality in 2006 that many Islamic countries are electing conservative, Islamist, and anti-American governments while non-Islamic countries are increasingly voting for Socialist or Marxist-Communist parties is a shock to many people in the West. Commonly linked to these democratic electoral transitions toward socialist/Marxist run or influenced governments are leftist insurgencies, some with strong indigenist aspects.

This essay primarily examines the latter; that is, the leftist-indigenist linkage tied to rising socialism and the relationship of both to insurgency.

BACKGROUND:

It was not commonly expected that either insurgent or electoral Marxism / Socialism in its various hues would enjoy a quite broad resurgence during the early 21st century. Both were largely banished at the end of the Cold War as illegitimate political-economic choices for countries,

Today, we have in South America a continent mostly governed by democratically elected Socialist governments, some quite hostile to the USA and to globalization (Evo Morales has referred to his Movement toward Socialism - perhaps over generously - as Americas worst nightmare) whereas others are simply more often going their own way by giving less-to-scant consideration of U.S. interests and desires.

These seemingly more benign and quiet shifts toward political-economic independence from US, and often Western, interests may have more far-reaching implications than the noisier and thus seemingly more important active insurgencies formed or influenced governments obvious today.

I speculate further in this regard that while few international analysts would have predicted after the fall of communism ca. 1990, actively violent Maoist insurgencies spreading quite rapidly in both economically vibrant places like India and in impoverished ones like Nepal during the early 21st century, or would have foretold some 80,000 cases of domestic unrest (and rising) within a successfully developing and increasingly unstable China, it is China and Indias political-economic and strategic movement into OTHER places that are shifting leftward - places like Latin America - that is most consequential.

Finally, completing this surprising global view, we see a leftward and anti-free trade (globalization) drift within much of Europe and other nations.

In my view, the interesting changes are still ahead of us.

I have termed this emerging political-economic landscape in a world policy environment currently largely consumed by Islamist-West War on Terror relations as The Other War; a contest with the developed West, and the USA in particular, in the realm of socialist/Marxist ideas and practices once thought banished by what the senior President Bush labelled, at the defeat of Communism, The New World Order, and which Professor Francis Fukuyama famously termed The End of History.

HISTORY IS BACK!

Some of the causes, relationships, and forms of emergent socialism / Marxism are new it is true, and it is precisely these that require examination.

The Economist (January 21st, 2006) refers to two sharply differing lefts... within Latin America, but my view is that the emerging global landscape as to the Other War is more complex than the Economist magazines dichotomy proposes.

For example, emerging Latin American socialism is enfolding what I have, in earlier lectures, salons, and corporate seminars, labelled the indigenization of the Andean Rim; an entirely new phenomenon to the extent that it is actually achieving power within governments, and now in Bolivia, control of government through the generalized mobilization of an indigenous population.

Second, whereas in some countries such as Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, leftism is merely electoral, in other countries leftist movements are shaping political-economic agendas through a subtle combination of simultaneous insurgency AND democratic participation. India and Nepal are examples of this pattern, as is Mexico and the Andean Rim generally (Chile excepted).

Finally, a transformative, globalizing, and revolutionary aspect is present in some of these leftward transitions that is absent in others countries, which seem rather content to trade internationally while dividing wealth according to socialist principles domestically.

Successful economic development after the fall of the Communist bloc countries, most experts then thought, would enfold a largely Western template and spur peaceful, hopefully liberalizing social and political change within new market-based economies. There were endless globalization through trade and democracy scenarios that virtually ignored, especially in the early 1990s, alternative possible futures.

Leaving aside the fact that today Muslim countries and regions are electing people, religiously conservative Islamists commonly, that the West would rather not deal with, the Other War transitions are also not following the Wests globalization plan.

THE OTHER WAR:

Today, the speculative betting on the upcoming Mexican election at the very minimum posits a broad, overt rejection of neo-liberal free trade agendas in favor of a likely leftward political-economic shift; either via a return of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) machine to power or a outright PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) presidential victory through the ascent of Mr. Obrador, the former Socialist Mayor of Mexico City. Mr. Obrador is the current presidential polls front runner. In tandem, the Zapatista rebels (a Marxist and indigenist movement brought to the worlds attention in Mexico by their 1994 violent response to NAFTA) is engaged in a six month campaign to mobilize the indians and poor of Mexico nationally. The stated Zapatista goal is to turn Mexican politics up side down. A serious ancillary concern is which way the powerful Mexican narco-syndicates will vote.

Within the past month, a first-ever indigenous (Indian) Socialist President of impoverished but resource rich Bolivia and a first-ever woman Socialist president of economically successful Chile were elected, while the long-dead Marxist revolutionary, Che Guevarra, has emerged as Latin Americas most popular icon. President Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) and Fidel Castro (Cuba), neither enamored of the United States, are expanding their influence within the region and beyond. Mr. Chavez has opined that the USA has lost control of Latin America and recently hosted the World Social Forum, a left dominated, anti-globalization alternative to the pro-globalization World Economic Forum.

THE INDIGENOUS-SOCIALIST CONNECTION:

In my view, the demonstration effect of electing an indigenous person and socialist to the Presidency of Bolivia on other Latin American countries with large indigenous populations - and often regional indigenous majorities - virtually guarantees further accumulation of political power by indigenous communities within parts of Latin America.

It does NOT guarantee the stability of this socialist-indigenous connection.

At this writing, indigenist/socialist political coalition challenges are afoot in Peru with respect to their upcoming election, and representatives of Ecuadors indigenous peoples are attending the anti-globalization and socialist World Social Forum to learn more. In both countries, as in Bolivia, indigenous political economic issues enfold traditional land control issues and various lifestyle issues, including the growing and use of coca, within an increasingly socialist rhetoric. Indeed, the President of Bolivia has installed, according to The Daily Journal Evos Campaign to Legalize Coca (Venezuela, Feb. 2, 2006), the coca growers leader, Felipe Caceras, to head the new Office of Coca and Comprehensive Development (abolishing the former position of national drugs control) with the promise that cocaine production will not be permitted. Bolivia is rather hard to manage, one might notice, in the best of times.

Perus Presidential candidate Humala, one of the most vavored candidates due to his indigenous and nationalistic (anti free trade neo-liberalism) pronouncements claims to be a revolutionary who notes that Peru and Bolivia have been separate nations for 180 years, but we have (a history) together of more than 1,500 years. Of course were thinking about integrating ourselves again. (The Daily Journal, [Venezuela], Jan. 29, 2006).

Notice Humalas clear indigenist (1,500 year history together) and socialist political melding and referencing; although one ought to take with the greatest caution the notion that this proposed integration might actually occur, given recent antipathy between their respective populations over events in the 180 years of their nationhood. The question likely revolves around the degree to which indigenization trends continue within BOTH nations that remain wedded to socialist agendas. This bears watching.

Guatemala, which only recently halted a decades long conflict, had the same strong though imperfect and uncomfortably blended indigenist and socialist aspect in its insurgency. The insurgency attempted the same combination of indigenous land control and lifestyle references within a larger socialist justice and equality rhetoric, with less than stellar revolutionary results. However, Guatemalas recent conflict was commonly seen and labelled by activists as an iteration of a Mayan 500 year resistance that extended into southern Mexico and neighboring countries.

The election of Socialist Evo Morales, an indigenous poor person, to the Presidency of Bolivia makes indigenous power seem concretely plausible in nations where these communities have long been excluded from meaningful power. This fact is not lost on President Morales himself, who at his inauguration touched on various socialist issues, but also referenced Inca motifs, incorporated indigenous ceremonies, and remarked as to their 500 year struggle [against white domination] not being in vain.

Note the wording; ...500 year struggle.

People forget that, as Nelson Reed so beautifully reminds us in his The Caste War of Yucatan, the Mayan Chan Santa Cruz polity of Yucatan retained defacto autonomy from Mexico into the 20th century (Reed 1964, p. 292). Periodic indigenous Mayan insurgency eruptions have occurred within Yucatan and neighboring Guatemala to the present day.

Similarly, many indigenous polities of South America have contested control of their affairs with the national states, whether through protest, lawsuits, or insurgency, from the time of European contact to the present day.

What is new is the indigenous attempt to transform and/or control those national states outright. This is new. This is large.

These are quite direct indicators that my premise is correct.

In previous Fortune 100 executive corporate seminars, in Washington University in St. Louis sponsored invitation-only salons, and at the Penn State Executive Program beginning in 1993 for Mexico and 2001/2002 for South Americas Andean Rim countries, I labeled this then-emerging trend the indigenization of politics within those countries.

In it interesting to notice as preamble to further discussion that the current insurgency in Bolivia and the Andean Rim generally, the just previous NAFTA inspired Zapatista insurgency in Mexico, and the 1850s Caste War insurgency in Yucatan; all were inspired by the developmental globalization of their day. More broadly, smaller indigenist insurgencies often, even typically, show adverse response to national economic development efforts.

The current socialist rise to power is similarly linked overtly to concerns, albeit different ones, over development and globalization impacts.

That is the etiology of the current socialist-indigenist linkage, about which I have more to say later.

MANAGING THE INDIGENIST-SOCIALIST CONNECTION:

Over the past decade and a half, I have discussed within the above and other venues why globalization would not go smoothly, why sociopolitical factors more than economic ones would undermine national development agendas and globalization itself, explained the relationships between national policy and styles of ethnic national (especially aboriginal) disputing within countries, and discussed how to predict emerging international trends in a multi-disciplinary, comparative, and integrated socio-psychologically grounded manner.

These last two topics - critical to further sensible consideration of the emerging Other War issues - are introduced as to their basic argument within my book Self-Determination in Western Democracies: aboriginal politics in a comparative perspective (Greenwood Press, 1992) and in Profiling Change Processes as a Strategic Analysis tool (Competitive Intelligence Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 1, Jan-March 2000).

These are both rather difficult reads and I recommend them only because they are necessary to further discussion. It may justify, to some extent, the readers future discomfort to notice that the former was reviewed as the most important book published on aboriginal rights and the latter has been successfully presented to explain emerging country change process analyses to various senior executive Fortune 100 audiences since the late 1990s (in both pre- and post publication formats).

I presume from here onward that the reader has achieved mastery of basic ideas to the extent that they were discussed within these published formats.

Indigenous (aboriginal or ethnic-national) and socialist/Marxist agendas and world views are not commonly congenial (Werther 1992).

The latter are based upon class and institutional/behavioral analyses that are not very, and in most cases not at all, conforming to the traditionalist, self-governing, perhaps communitarian - but certainly not communist or modern state-socialist - assumptions, world views, and desired solutions of the indigenous populations.

Indigenous (aboriginal and ethnic self-determination) agendas are, unless malformed by necessity of defense against state initiatives, typically about land, lifestyle, indigenous group self-government, and local power. Most aboriginal ethnic national political or self-determination movements do not, in fact, seek to separate from states nor to overthrow and/or control them.

To the extent that they are given bureaucratic and legalistic paths to power negotiation with the government, they tend to use them. Furthermore, the core national assumptions and policy styles of the various disputants form a macro-environment within which the dance of conflicting claims between indigenous populations and national states plays itself out.

This dance is complex, nuanced, but predictable; often definitive.

Therein lies the states core ability to manage political-economic and societal movements that seek to combine indigenous and socialist interests.

It is my opinion, in the first instance, that the combination of state-socialist or Marxist/communist agendas and indigenous (aboriginal or ethnic national) agendas WHEN THEY OCCUR owes more to the inability, and often short-sighted policies, of national states of the conservative to moderate hue to effectively manage state-indigenous relationships than to any generic attractions between the modern left and the desires of indigenous groups.

Of course, socialist/communist governments can be just as dim and ineffective (witness past Soviet nationalities policies) in their state-indigenous relationship management, but that is another story.

It is therefore my opinion, in the second instance, that the combination of socialist or Marxist/communist and indigenist movements is inherently unstable due to broadly differing interests, values, world views, and ambitions under normal circumstances.

To transform the latter (indigenous peoples) into the former (socialist/Marxists) is what the Soviets, the Nicaraguan Sandanistas, and many other modern leftist movements and states so spectacularly failed at.

The Mexican Zapatistas and the Bolivian Movement Toward Socialism has apparently learned from this, whereas many national governments seem not to have done so. The Bechtel / Bolivian government water development scheme combined with the then USA/Bolivian government policy of even traditional use coca eradication is almost a roadmap of how to collapse a government via indigenous/socialist joint mobilization. The initial Mexican government response to NAFTA impacts on Chiapas also informs us nicely.

Finally, it is my opinion that the wise management of such socialist-indigenist conflicts and political movements, when they occur, offers far more scope for success in bringing a Western-friendly outcome to conclusion than any attempt at overt suppression; which almost alone could meld those naturally divergent interests and world views over the longer term.

In this aspect, longer term Mexican government responses to indigenous-socialist insurgency management in Chiapas had more salutory outcomes; although the Mexicos political-economic picture has worsened in many ways.

Consequently, an informed security management response addressing the uncomfortably blended indigenist-socialist political movements is indicated.

These national security solutions vary in complex but knowable, thus often quite predictable, ways from country to country as suggested by both the Self-Determination... and Profiling Change Processes... considerations previously published and lectured upon.

THE SOCIALIST INSURGENT / DEVELOPMENT NEXUS:

As the USA recently discovered in the Middle East and in North Africa, one can promote democracy and simultaneously obtain painful outcomes.

The current socialist and Marxist/communist movements - whether violent or peacefully democratic - have their genesis in the perceived dysfunctions, perhaps relatively short term, of economic development and globalization.

The most supportive analyses confirm that globalization and development does not raise all ships equally or at the same time. It raises opportunity certainly, but not equally for all either. Economic theory makes many assumptions about the benefits of free trade in the long-run; but, as the economist John Maynard Keynes commented, in the long run we are all dead. People get impatient quickly.

Consequently it is my longstanding opinion that the Other War socialist / Marxist / Maoist insurgencies visible today, whether violent or peacefully democratic, have their primary genesis in the impatience of people to await the promised benefits of the long-run, particularly in view of the mostly short-run political-economic policies of national states pursuing national development amid globalization. There is nothing unexpected in this.

I have said nothing negative whatsoever about the positive benefits of freer trade and democracy, only having commented that particular responses to it are entirely to be expected and need to be accounted for in policy.

These outcomes can be and have been change profiled with considerable precision in various countries.

The tentative conclusion that I wish to leave for the readers consideration is that no positive Other War solution is possible for those who prefer open markets and Western democracies as globalizations outcomes without a wise understanding about these kinds of interconnected expected negative responses to globalization, national development, and insurgency/socialism.

Therein lies the more serious problem - writ large - for national security professionals and the countries they serve. The ground of disputing and change could have been altered in strategically useful ways, but was not.

Results followed.

Having been disappointed by short-term globalization outcomes, and apparently unwilling to await the promised and theoretically supported long-term political-economic benefits, a number of countries have elected socialist governments that combine aversion to globalization with an aversion to the USA, globalizations prime champion, to various degrees.

Part of this response, is to invite other powers to invest in and form political-economic-strategic alliances. Latin American countries, Brazil in particular, have looked to the Middle East, China, India, and Africa for such alliances.

The Daily Journal (Venezuela, Feb. 1, 2006) Castro Thanks China reports leaders comments on the increasingly close ties between the countries where Cuba-China relations are focussed on promoting the construction of socialism in both countries. Cuba is, of course, a major supporter of the socialist movement in Venezuela, providing doctors and teachers in exchange for Venezualan oil, while China is now the second largest investor throughout Latin America. Most impressively, all this is being indirectly funded by Western, and especially American, investments in China and consumer purchases of Chinese products and Venezuelan oil.

This Cuban and Chinese effort to promote socialism within Latin America is thus ultimately funded by the West and by America, and it is self-sustaining because the latter provide the cash flow.

Further, it is to be expected that illegitimate groups IN THOSE COUNTRIES will mirror their networks onto these legitimate trade and political initiatives.

Indeed, it will be entirely a miracle if, for example, Chinese crime groups neglect the new fact that China is now the number two investor within Latin America. One presumes this also for Middle Eastern and Indian connections.

It works the other way too.

The Daily Journal (Venezuela) reports under the title Revolutionary Fervor Sweeps World Social Forum, Causes Conflicts (Jan. 28, 2006) that the Egyptian neo-Marxist economist Samil Amin desires ...to build a world-wide anti-imperialist front that supports leftist organizations around the world.

This ought certainly concern national security professionals in a variety of countries such as India and Nepal, where electoral socialism occurs in tandem with Maoist insurgency and terrorism. This is by no means historically unique.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, India and Nepal have vibrant and growing Maoist insurgencies, China has both Islamic unrest and anti-globalization unrest of massive proportions, the Middle East has every form of unrest and insurgency that can be imagined with significant Middle Eastern expatriate populations within those now socialist Latin American countries bent on diversifying away from the USA.

Consequently, for the USA, the emergence of socialism in most of Latin America and perhaps in Mexico too presents, in my view, far broader and deeper emerging national security concerns than the indigenist-socialist insurgency developments within any particular country.

If this supposition is correct, the path of emerging insurgency development is clarified. The Other War mechanism is the core, and - as a considerable irony - we in the West are the ultimate financiers via globalization.

Thank you.

This essay is being co-published and publically available with: