+++ The Next Big Thing: Neomedievalism +++

[elehhhhna]

The Next Big Thing: Neomedievalism
The world is fragmenting, badly. Gird yourself for a new Dark Age.
BY PARAG KHANNA | APRIL 15, 2009
Many see the global economic crisis as proof that we live in one world. But as countries stumble to right the wrongs of the corporate masters of the universe, they are driving us right back to a future that looks like nothing more than a new Middle Ages, that centuries-long period of amorphous conflict from the fifth to the 15th century when city-states mattered as much as countries.


The state isn't a universally representative phenomenon today, if it ever was. Already, billions of people live in imperial conglomerates such as the European Union, the Greater Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the emerging North American Union, where state capitalism has become the norm. But at least half the United Nations’ membership, about 100 countries, can hardly be considered responsible sovereigns. Billions live unsure of who their true rulers are, whether local feudal lords or distant corporate executives. In Egypt and India, democratic elections have devolved into auctions. Delivering security and providing welfare aren't just campaign promises; they are the campaign. The fragmentation of societies from within is clear: From Bogotá to Bangalore, gated communities with private security are on the rise.

This diffuse, fractured world will be run more by cities and city-states than countries. Once, Venice and Bruges formed an axis that spurred commercial expansion across Eurasia. Today, just 40 city-regions account for two thirds of the world economy and 90 percent of its innovation. The mighty Hanseatic League, a constellation of well-armed North and Baltic Sea trading hubs in the late Middle Ages, will be reborn as cities such as Hamburg and Dubai form commercial alliances and operate "free zones" across Africa like the ones Dubai Ports World is building. Add in sovereign wealth funds and private military contractors, and you have the agile geopolitical units of a neomedieval world. Even during this global financial crisis, multinational corporations heavily populate the list of the world's largest economic entities; the commercial diplomacy of emerging-market firms such as China’s Haier and Mexico’s Cemex has already turned North-South relations inside out faster than the nonaligned movement ever did.







http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/04/15/the_next_big_thing_neomedievalism

[Electric Monk]

1. I truly believe this is what Bush Sr meant when he talked about "a thousand points of light"

implying the rest in darkness.

I prefer to call it neo-feudalism though.

[prairierose]

6. I think neo-feudalism is more accurate too.....n/t

[KittyWampus]

7. I agree with the 1st two posters. Neo-feudalism.

[aquart]

11. No. There really isn't time for that to develop.

And we haven't the religious chain of loyalty that could bind it.

Besides, feudalism was broken by the Black Plague. We will be seeing deaths in that range soon enough.

[Shandris]

13. Ironically enough...

...the 'standard world' in 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons is known as the Points of Light philosophy of world creation, where -- exactly as you describe -- the 'points of light' are separated by vast areas of darkness. I had never made the connection until you brought up Pappy's old comment about that though.

More than a little interesting, I think. :(

[Amonester]

2. They can go medieval all they want, but...

if they don't have consumers (ie DEMAND), they have nowhere to go.

Add to that, if they don't reverse the damage done by increasingly acidic oceans, they R dead beat.

[Ship of Fools]

3. "They got the guns, but we got the numbers ..."

Thank you for your prescience, Jim Morrison ... However, when you boil it all down, they have to breathe the same air as we do. When the shit hits the fan, no one gets out of here alive. Just sayin ...

[JDPriestly]

4. This may be where we are headed.

The wealthiest of Republicans no longer have a sense of national unity, a sense of oneness with other Americans.

They hide their money from the huddled masses, placing it in secret accounts in Switzerland and in corporate shells in the Caymans and elsewhere.

This debt crisis, to the extent it is not manufactured, is the test of our union.

We are facing inner obstacles and divisions that grow with each day that someone calls for balancing the budget to finance wars on the backs of children, the poor, the disabled and the elderly.

And student loans are so oppressive in a country with high unemployment as to amount to a new form of indentured servitude.

We are at a crossroads. Will we remain a nation? Or will the red states just veer off into some sort of no-new-taxes country of their own and take their conservative allies with them?

Seriously, it's as if the rich want to divorce all the poor and elderly and disabled.

And then they claim to be Christians?

[DBoon]

10. capitalism created the nation state

and capitalism will get rid of it the moment it becomes inconvenient

[JDPriestly]

14. Actually, I would not personify the system.

Capitalism is just a label for the way that the movement of money, resources and work is organized in certain societies.

It isn't capitalism that is or is not the problem. It is greed, rapacious, unabashed, excessive greed on the parts of a very few people.

We could change this if we simply amended our on the forms of business organization (which are now determined at the state level), accounting, taxes and educated people to be wary of the concentration of excessive wealth and power in the hands of a very few.

We could also simply strengthen and enforce anti-trust laws.

Leveraged buy-outs should be prohibited or made less profitable.

If you want to buy a company, buy it with your money, not with the money of the company you are buying. I'm not even sure there are enough independent companies left to allow for leveraged buy-outs any more.

I'm open to a critic of my idea about leveraged buy-outs. It's just an idea. I haven't thought through all the pros and cons of it.

[Zorra]

5. I absolutely love the term neo-medievalism.

Neo-medievalism needs an opposition.

Neo-RobinHoodism.

[KittyWampus]

8. Neo-Enlightenment.

[bvar22]

9. I've already got my green peter pan suit,

a Bow & Arrow,
a band of Merry Men,
and a hideout in The Woods.

I'm ready.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Link to full article for those without FP subscriptions (though there isn't much more)

http://www.paragkhanna.com/Neomedievalism%20-%20FP%20-%20May-June%202009.pdf

I disagree. He's called Egypt wrong, for instance, and I can't see India and Egypt were at all similar, democracy-wise, back in 2009 either. Dubai is looking economically dodgy by now, too.

[Odin2005]

15. K&R