Abstract

The key issues of the globalization process relate to the historic background of centuries of Western accumulation of power through realpolitik; US cultivation of semi-colonial satellites in Japan and East Asia endowed with economic empowerment in the post World War II period through a policy of benign hegemony; the rise of China, followed by India, as globalizers intent on preserving their sovereignty and independent will; a growing insurgency by a significant segment of Latin American countries against the ideology and praxis emanating from the Washington Consensus; and, owing to its dubious distinction as the world’s politically weakest region, the outright sycophantic submission of Black Africa to the dictates of the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO, resulting in the deepening relegation and prostration of Black Africa. It is, indeed, arguable that the great issue of the current globalization process is the overall eminent success of Asian countries, and the wholesale dismal showing of Africa. This is the central contrast and contradiction in globalization’s unevenness and inequality. In a word, there is a correlation between power and the winners and losers of globalization. Given globalization’s propensity to concentrate resources in a few places, a region’s developed or developing political and economic capabilities, not its historic and continuing victimization or habitual dependence on “charitable aid” and other “altruistic” interventions from the international community, determines its gains or setbacks in the fierce global competition for scarce developmental resources.

Key words: Globalization, Western countries, power, US cultivation, slavery