The Fourth World War

From Information Clearing House:

Directed by Rick Rowley. With Suheir Hammad

4th World War - taken from a speech by Marcos calling the war against globalization the 4th World War - is a brief, documentary of radical resistance to global capitalism

Despite the titanic struggles of dispossessed peoples around the world, the wealth of nations continues to reside in fewer and fewer hands. The economies of poor countries collapse under vicious IMF policies, and capitalism's global 'clubs' thrive ever and ever upward. Meanwhile, people keep struggling, ultimately downward.

From the front-lines of conflicts in Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Palestine, Korea, 'the North' from Seattle to Genova, and the 'War on Terror' in New York, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
It is the story of men and women around the world who resist being annihilated in this war.

The Fourth World War

Subcomandante Marcos
La Realidad, Chiapas, Mexico

Translated by irlandesa

The following text is an excerpt from a talk given by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos to the International Civil Commission of Human Rights Observation in La Realidad, Chiapas on November 20, 1999. The outline for the talk was published in Letters 5.1 and 5.2 in November of the same year, with the titles "Chiapas: the War: 1, Between the Satellite and the Microscope, the Other's Gaze," and 2, "The Machinery of Ethnocide." Any similarity to the conditions of the current war is purely coincidental. Published in Spanish in La Jornada, Tuesday, October 23, 2001.

The Restructuring of War

As we see it, there are several constants in the so-called world wars, in the First World War, in the Second, and in what we call the Third and Fourth.

One of these constants is the conquest of territories and their reorganization. If you consult a map of the world you can see that there were changes at the end of all of the world wars, not only in the conquest of territories, but in the forms of organization. After the First World War, there was a new world map, after the Second World War, there was another world map.

At the end of what we venture to call the "Third World War," and which others call the Cold War, a conquest of territories and a reorganization took place. It can, broadly speaking, be situated in the late 80's, with the collapse of the socialist camp of the Soviet Union, and, by the early 90's, what we call the Fourth World War can be discerned.

Another constant is the destruction of the enemy. Such was the case with nazism in the second World War, and, in the Third, with all that had been known as the USSR and the socialist camp as an option to the capitalist world.

The third constant is the administration of conquest. At the moment at which the conquest of territories is achieved, it is necessary to administer them, so that the winnings can be disbursed to the force which won. We use the term 'conquest" quite a bit, because we are experts in this. Those States, which previously called themselves national, have always tried to conquer the Indian peoples. Despite those constants, there are a series of variables which change from one world war to another: strategy, the actors, or the parties, the armaments used and, lastly, the tactics. Although the latter change, the former are present and can be applied in order to understand one war and another.

The Third World War, or the Cold War, lasted from 1946 (or, if you wish, from the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945) until 1985-1990. It was a large world war made up of many local wars. As in all the others, at the end there was a conquest of territories which destroyed an enemy. Second act, it moved to the administration of the conquest and the reorganization of territories. The actors in this world war were: one, the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective satellites; two, the majority of the European countries; three, Latin America, Africa, parts of Asia and Oceana. The peripheral countries revolved around the US or the USSR, as it suited them. After the superpowers and the peripherals were the spectators and victims, or, that is, the rest of the world. The two superpowers did not always fight face to face. They often did so through other countries. While the large industrialized nations joined with one of the two blocs, the rest of the countries and of the population appeared as spectators or as victims. What characterized this war was: one, the arms orientation and, two, local wars. In the nuclear war, the two superpowers competed in order to see how many times they could destroy the world. The method of convincing the enemy was to present it with a very large force. At the same time, local wars were taking place everywhere in which the superpowers were involved.

The result, as we all know, was the defeat and destruction of the USSR, and the victory of the US, around which the great majority of countries have now come together. This is when what we call the "Fourth World War" broke out. And here a problem arose. The product of the previous war should have been a unipolar world - one single nation which dominated a world where there were no rivals - but, in order to make itself effective, this unipolar world would have to reach what is known as "globalization." The world must be conceived as a large conquered territory with an enemy destroyed. It was necessary to administer this new world, and, therefore, to globalize it. They turned, then, to information technology, which, in the development of humanity, is as important as the invention of the steam engine. Computers allow one to be anywhere simultaneously. There are no longer any borders or constraints of time or geography. It is thanks to computers that the process of globalization began. Separations, differences, Nation States, all eroded, and the world became what is called, realistically, the global village.

The concept on which globalization is based is what we call "neoliberalism," a new religion which is going to permit this process to be carried out. With this Fourth World War, once again, territories are being conquered, enemies are being destroyed and the conquest of these territories is being administered.

The problem is, what territories are being conquered and reorganized, and who is the enemy? Given that the previous enemy has disappeared, we are saying that humanity is now the enemy. The Fourth World War is destroying humanity as globalization is universalizing the market, and everything human which opposes the logic of the market is an enemy and must be destroyed. In this sense, we are all the enemy to be vanquished: indigenous, non-indigenous, human rights observers, teachers, intellectuals, artists. Anyone who believes themselves to be free and is not.

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