Boletim Semanal - Artigos Acadêmicos

Esta semana oferecemos o artigo de Theotonio dos Santos "Development and Civlisation". Este artigo é parte do Seminário sobre o Pensamento de Gandhi organizado pelo Conselho de Ciências Sociais da índia com apoio da REGGEN.

Development and Civilisation

Introduction

The end of the Cold War at the end of the 1980s left the new decade with new realities: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had been facing enormous difficulties, the economies were in crisis, the political regimes were being dismantled and the ideological system was in disarray. Civil wars, political instability, mass unemployment and poverty presented a gloomy reality to the former Soviet countries.

Meanwhile, Eurocentrism is now facing a definite crisis. Anglo–American capitalism as the ideal model for global socio-economic development and for modern democracy is gradually losing ground along with the decline of the US economic and political supremacy. The emergence of Newly Industrialising Countries (NICs) of Asia and Latin America challenged the US absolute hegemony, while the revival of Islamic fundamentalism, the Latin American integration and the subsequent Mercosul and the South American Community directly defied the US domination. These facts draw a new world, more complex and more difficult to be administered. The US supremacy will certainly continue for a period of time, but its hegemony now has to be shared with the European Union, Japan and Russia, as well as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), etc.

The Cold War ended and with it the justification for extended military aggressiveness. As the pretended unquestionable winner of the Cold War, the United States also found it impossible to maintain its hegemony, faced with budget pressure and power limits. Thus, the decade of the 90s witnessed the end of the absolute US hegemony and the beginning of a new world system: shared global leaderships. In the first decade of the 21st century we assisted the intent of the Bush administration to re-install the undis-puted unilateral hegemony of United States over the World. This phase is now ending with the world financial crisis, which started in 2007 and which transformed in 2008–2009 into a general economic crisis. Para continuar a ler o artigo, clique aqui.