Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos ...

Prefiguration and emergence 23
Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s development programmes
were an extension of the competing super-power ideologies seeking to
promote societal development though centrally planned and free market
variants. These efforts were aligned with the pursuit of political influence
and strategic advantage within the prevailing system of International
Relations. The defeat of Soviet Communism following attempts to match
aggressive US arms expenditure programmes resulted in systemic collapse
of Soviet overseas aid programmes. In a Deleuzian sense the global became
smoother with the axiomatic of capitalist neo-liberal development prevailing.
The notable exception to this was China where communism entered
crisis, as indicated by events in Tiananmen Square in 1987, but preserved
sufficient coherence to reject International Monetary fund (IMF)/World
Bank (WB) formulas for restructuring. China effectively rejected key ‘loan
conditions’ refusing to adopt suggested interest rate and repayment
structures, factors which have underpinned the country’s emergence as the
dynamo of the world economy. Similar moves were subsequently made by
Brazil and Argentina as the developing world became more confident in
challenging IMF and WB strictures.
The humbling of the former Soviet Union massively reduced its standing
and negotiating strength within executive elements of the global institutional
nexus, particularly the UN. Just as the transition societies of East and Central
Europe clamoured to join the EU, Russia’s priority was admission to the
hallowed ground of global capitalist interest representation. Admission to the
G7, rendering it the G8, was a major objective of Soviet foreign policy
partially achieved in 1994. Significantly, the G7 continues to meet to exercise
certain key functions relating to fiscal matters. Russia’s pursuit of membership
of the domains of global governance was influential in limiting any residual
ambitions to maintain a ‘peoples’ model of development in African countries,
where collective agrarian and land reform approaches had been pursued
throughout the 1970s. These self same ambitions ensured that diplomatic
linkage inhibited the use of veto powers within the UN.
The high profile bi-lateral summits between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail
Gorbachev which dominated the mid 1980s alarmed US officials not only
in the Pentagon but across the Washington landscape. Militarily, there were
real fears that the two presidents would autonomously announce the satellite
verified deconstruction of submarine fleets which would be assembled in
designated ports and cut up, live on spy-cam. Neo-conservatives within the
Washington administration desperately needed to reassert business as usual
by reasserting system imperatives – the pursuit of negotiation through
teams of professionals acculturated by the appropriate systems. In this
context speculation about Ronald Reagan’s faculties probably owed as
much to such right wing positioning as attempts by the left to discredit a
Republican leader.
Russian quietude provides an overlooked but important backdrop to the
consolidation of economic global reach in train via the General Agreement