GREIDER: Well, globalization is driven largely by the industrial revolution we're in. Very much like the last industrial revolution, a 100 years ago, when automobiles, electricity, telephones, other great inventions came along, our -- Ours is based on the semi-conductor chip and computerization and all of the great leap forward in telecommunications, and so forth. It is not driven by democratic values. And -- And one of the fundamental misconceptions of conventional wisdom is that the -- the globalizing economy is somehow spreading democratic values. That's simply not true, and -- and recent events, like Indonesia, demonstrate it very clearly for people.

Multinational corporations and -- and investors and our government supported the totalitarian regime in Indonesia for 30-plus years and never, never approached these questions of how does this government treat its own people. Is there anything resembling labor rights, or environmental values, or all the other things we now say we care about. That was done under cover of the Cold War, of course. Without the Cold War as a sort of shield for public opinion, we are now beginning to face some of the human questions that -- that are absolutely fundamental to progress, but which have always been evaded up to now. So --

GREIDER: The other essential point about globalization is if you put aside the rhetoric and the propaganda, globalizing commerce is in some ways the enemy of freedom. And -- And I mean that in two ways. If you go to the ground of developing countries, as I've done in my travels, you see again and again conflicts between human rights -- that is, labor rights, the ability of workers to organize and speak for themselves and the interests of -- of the local government and the multinational corporations and investors who are there doing business -- and I'm not talking about sweat shops, I'm talking about the biggest corporations in the world: General Electric, Boeing, Motorola, Intel, go down the list, they're all implicated in that.

The second dimension of it is much more difficult to -- to get a hold of. And that is the power of the global marketplace itself and par -- particularly global finance can literally trump the sovereignty of a local government, sometimes even a very big and successful government in Western Europe or even in the United States in some ways. So, nobody has yet figured out how you create democracy in a country which, in fact, is losing control over its own governing powers. And that's a -- that's a dilemma that's going to be with us for probably a century or longer.

There -- The -- The only way out ultimately are building international structures of governance and the world ain't ready for that, to put it mildly. The -- Americans are certainly not ready for it and really most people in the world are not ready for it. So, that's a really important issue that links with the military questions, because you can't send armies around the world even if you're -- have virtuous intentions and -- and conquer other countries, small and poor perhaps, without some legitimacy of law and international understanding behind it. So, those -- those two dangers are sort of along side each other in the world.

CDI: I'd like to touch on -- you talked about the -- the Cold War and now that we don't have the cover of the Cold War, I'm going to jump -- jump ahead to another question. Has the end of the Cold War and the acceleration of globalization changed the role of the US military?

GREIDER: Well, while we had a Cold War, and we had alliances, and -- and forward positioning of our forces, and -- and a pretty clear understanding of who the bad guys were, we could put our troops and our military readiness in lots of places that, in fact, were not democracies, that, in fact, were their own forms of totalitarian government and also be in -- in -- without saying so very directly, also be protecting the presence of American commerce and banking; that is, multinational production and the investors, and so forth and so on.

When the Cold War ends, you have a -- you have a -- a dilemma for the US military, unacknowledged, to be sure, but it's real. Why are you -- Why are you in alliance with the Indonesian government? Are you there to protect the -- the Boeing factory, and the Nike factory, and -- and those other assets of -- of Western capital or are you there to defend the rights of people? And that's a little too simple, but not much. It -- And -- And I think the public, if not our government, is -- is gradually beginning to grasp that -- that -- that these two are not necessarily synonymous anymore.

And, to me, that's -- that's another danger on the horizon, that -- And I say this sympathetically to the US military. We can get pulled into a conflict which pretends to be in defense of human values and, in fact, is in defense of capital.

CDI: Often the question is framed as one of state sovereignty versus international sovereignty. In -- In particular, the UN is -- is seen as an encroachment upon state sovereignty. And you've talked about how international, multinational corporations are actually trumping state sovereignty in certain ways. Can you in some way kind of compare the -- the two between the -- a non-governmental organization like the UN and how they encroach upon state sovereignty and what the implications of that are as opposed to a multinational corporation?

GREIDER: Well, the big vacuum, I think, in our -- in our present post-Cold War era is that the -- the leading governments, especially the American government has not attended to rebuilding those international institutions like the United Nations in a way that gives them legitimacy with all countries. And that's a difficult, difficult task. The UN has -- has not fulfilled its original promise in -- in many obvious ways, but that's not a reason to -- to -- to claim unilateral power to run the world.

And what I fear is that the United States, partly out of its own self-interest and partly out of its -- its -- its arrogance, is pretending that, well, we're the good guy in the world, we have the military power and, therefore, we will pick and choose where we're going to use that power to assert, quote, human rights or -- or international law. Simultaneously, we are -- we are standing outside the -- the discussion of international law.

We refuse to ratify and agree to the -- the landmine ban treaty, which most countries in the world negotiated. We refuse to participate in the new treaty for an international criminal court. We're still trying to pay our back dues to the United Nations and we undercut it whenever it suits us to do so.

Meanwhile, on the economic side, we are pushing a series of international trade agreements which are quite imperial in their nature. They tell other countries you got to run your banking system this way, you got to accept these rules for trade, etc., etc. And we -- We have the International Monetary Fund, which plays a sort of bankruptcy cop role in global finance, and the World Bank, which ostensibly is for development, but basically its lending is closely tied to US interests, etc. My point is we -- we are pretending to be something that we're not.

If we really wanted to build an international order that -- that's -- that's sustain the peace and allows the development of democracy, and human rights, and so forth, we would be back at the table, taking on the arduous task of negotiating law that people will accept around the world. We are not doing that and I fear that we're heading down the road, whether it's two years from now or ten years from now, in a terrible collision where -- where this -- this contradictory role is exposed quite vividly, where -- where we want people to follow us and -- and -- and we're the ones standing outside the -- the international legal system, not -- not those other countries. I hope that doesn't happen, but we don't find much consciousness of the dilemma within our own governing ranks.

CDI: Okay. Let me turn back to economic issues. Economic inequality, particularly between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere, is increasing. What do you see as the possible implications of this widening gap?

GREIDER: Well, I -- it's -- I'm not an opponent, as some are, of the process of globalization. Developing countries, of course, want a piece of the action and -- and will do what they need to do to get in the game. And you can go to Southeast Asia to see that. You can go to Eastern Europe and see it, Latin America. That's not a -- That's not a threat to the United States, that's a -- that's a virtuous process for the world. What's missing are the social rules and obligations to capital, to multinational corporations, to global investors that make then accountable for their own behavior.

To -- To get a picture of where we are, think of the United States in the late 19th Century in a very similar period of turmoil, industrial invention, rapid expansion of manufacturing. An economy then was nationalizing, literally becoming one market for the first time, and there were no rules. And that went on for quite a long time, through a period of scandalous behavior, outrageous abuse of people, including child labor, all the sins that we see now in the global economy.

It did not end until people managed to struggle for political change and big movements, labor and human rights -- they didn't call it that then, but all of these movements then eventually create a set of rules for this national economy. That's where we are now in the global economy. And our government and other leading governments have -- have so far been unwilling to devote their political energies to building those rules. What they're doing is building rules which facilitate trade and facilitate the ambitions of this sector or that sector, but they're not dealing with the society of global commerce.

And so, I guess my -- I guess I'm an optimist because I think that's going to happen. It's already the -- the agitation for it has already begun. But I'm -- I'm -- I'm fearful that the political leadership, and especially the leaders in business and finance, will resist and we'll have a bloody conflict before it's over.

CDI: Are there any NGO's or any international organizations presently in place that could become a vehicle for this kind of -- of change that you're talking about?

GREIDER: Well, they already are. I mean, if you go down the list around the world, Human Rights Watch and their -- and their foreign counterparts, the environmental organizations that have an international reach see this problem in very similar terms. Organized labor, both in the US and in Western Europe, have -- have reawakened to their original internationalist spirit. There are certainly still strong elements of protectionist attitude within the ranks of labor, but I'm convinced that labor will be one of the leaders in -- in internationalizing the rules.

When you go to the other end, it's -- of the system, it's a more complicated picture because, first of all, the governments there are -- tend to be elite and well-financed, and their -- and they see these rules as a threat to their development. Not -- Not universally, but most of the poor countries are -- are afraid to introduce such things as labor rights because that means rising wages. And if your wages rise too rapidly, the companies move to the next poor country down the line.

That's why you got to have rules, because there's a sort of food chain now of exploitation in which, believe me, all of the best names in international commerce move about in that way, partly looking for markets, partly looking for labor-cost savings. So, you can't do it country by country; you've got to do it internationally.

And I -- my view is if we have another round of trade negotiations, which the president and others have said they want to launch this Fall, it shouldn't go anywhere unless labor rights, basic human rights, and environmental standards are part of the package. And if they don't come back with that in the negotiation, let's -- let's be against it. Because that's the -- that's the key to -- to making the system survive over the long run.

CDI: So, does it come down to a competition between two sets of interests over who owns the idea of human security? That is to say, if we're involved in -- in -- in military -- military interventions around the world under the auspices of human security to protect the -- the human rights of -- of the individuals, let's say in Indonesia, as you had framed it earlier, or is it -- or do the other -- the other side of the coin, international labor organizations or human rights organizations need to somehow take the idea of human security back? I mean, is there a competition between --

GREIDER: I think -- I think -- I think framing it as a question of human security and -- and leading, therefore, to -- to a proposition that we're entitled to intervene anywhere in the world where we see people being abused by their government is, first of all, utter folly, but -- but secondly, quite dangerous. You can't establish a world in which people are respected by their own governments and are entitled to some set of universal rights; that is, free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion. You're not going to achieve that with a gun barrel. You're just not.

You're going to achieve it, if you can do it at all, through law. That's a slower, longer, more difficult process, but I'm talking about building relationships between countries -- and -- and that's happening, to some extent -- that can be translated into, okay, what's our bottom line here, what's our minimum choke point for the condition of human beings around the world and let's try to codify that in law. This is not rocket science, as the cliche says. We've had international understandings of labor stand -- labor rights for 60 years.

The problem is getting a political agreement that's enforceable, very much like a trade agreement, and it says if China insists on abusing its citizens and its workers in different ways to its own advantage or to the advantage of some multinational corporation, we -- we claim the-- the right to penalize its traded goods with a tariff, or with a full ban, etc., etc.

If you read trade agreements today, they all have penalty clauses in them, only they're -- they're designed to protect capital, designed to protect property rights of -- of -- of copyrights and patents, and so forth and so on. In a sense, all I'm suggesting is that until -- until we recognize that you can't have a global system that protects capital and -- and ignores humans, we won't have a stable system, and that's a military threat down the road somehow, some way we can't describe, but it's not an un-doable project. It's tough politics, but it's not impossible.

CDI: So, you -- you -- (gap in tape??) -- How would you characterize the interaction between human security and economic globalization? Specifically, you had -- you've alluded to the fact that perhaps economic globalization can actually be used as a mechanism for expanding human security. That is, through tariffs and trade agreements, if they are properly constructed and enforced, could actually become a means for creating a standard of human security around the world.

GREIDER: See, I don't know quite what people mean when they say "human security." Do they mean there are certain crimes against humanity that we will not tolerate, that we will send military force to -- to -- to intervene? That was the alleged rationale for -- for bombing Kosovo and -- and Serbia.

But then if that's the standard, why didn't we do something in Rwanda? Or, for that matter, why didn't we do something long before the present moment in Indonesia? This was not a secret. People of -- of many stripes were sounding warnings about the situation in the military in Indonesia, and particularly East Timor, long before any blood was shed. Did you hear anything from our government saying if that happens, we will do the following? No.

So, I think it's a very phony rationale for selective use of military power when it suits us. That's not law, that's not principle, it's -- it's a government picking and choosing where it -- it decides to engage.

I will add another dimension to the -- to the contradictions. We have in this country drifted into a -- a military strategy which I call the "casualty-free war," where our conditioning of where it is we'll use this military power is driven by the knowledge that we don't want any Americans to get killed.

Now if you read the history of warfare, that's a very improbable standard for maintaining a military. And anybody in uniform you can't have three seconds of conversation without -- without them pointing this out. So, we're willing to -- to use our high technological military force only against countries that are so poor or backward that they don't have the same stuff. And look at where we deploy, you will see that repeated again and again, most recently in Kosovo.

Now we jump to Russia and it has a breakaway province called Chechnya and it learned from Kosovo, did it not? It learned that you don't send the infantry in and -- and get mauled by local guerilla forces, you stand off and you bomb, and they can do total damage to the Chechnya province -- Republic by -- by that strategy. Is that a moral strategy? If it's not a moral strategy, then what about our strategy in Kosovo? See what I mean? There are layers of -- of question here about how a, quote, superpower with high advanced weaponry maintains peace selectively that Americans are not debating.

CDI: Would you go so far as to say that human security or the idea of intervening on the grounds of human security is, in some way, a rationale for continuing high military budgetary spending and --

GREIDER: I wish it were that rational. I think -- I think we got -- I mean, my whole argument has been that this post-Cold War period, the last decade, has been a sort of status quo vacuum, where for lots of political reasons nobody, not Democrats, not Republicans, and certainly not the military-industrial complex wanted to take up the hard questions in any profound way.

So, there was no restructuring of the military, there was no debate about any of these questions of what is our military for, and mostly we just wanted to go along status quo ante with a modest reduction of forces and -- and defense budgets. It's hard to change. It's -- particularly after 40 years of the same system. So now, inevitably, you've got all of this hardware, all this firepower, aren't you ever going to use it for anything?

And I -- I mean this literally. I think we drifted into the various episodes where it does actually get used much more than anybody saying, well, our principle of international order is this, let's -- let's -- let's enforce that principle. And that's -- that's part of the dangerous situation because you end up with a kind of ad hoc self-interested application of force, and the rest of the world can see that. People around the world are not stupid. They can recognize that the United States is -- is adrift here and potentially could turn on them under the right circumstances. So, I -- to me, that's an incentive for other countries, particularly the poor, more remote countries, to develop defensive systems on the cheap. What would those be? They would very systems that we fear: chemical, biological, maybe nuclear, but really enough telecommunications to -- to fritz up our high-tech systems, if they can. And I think -- I think that's what we're sowing around the world now with out inertia. We're -- We're inviting countries to develop their own regular -- irregular defensive systems in the hope that if we should some -- for some reason turn on them, they'll be able to at least stymie us and -- and -- and avoid an insertion of our power.

CDI: (Inaudible) -- come with one final question actually maybe to -- Let me just go with the question. Do the wealthiest nations have a responsibility to mitigate the effects of economic globalization?

GREIDER: Of course. I mean, we -- In some fundamental way -- You have to understand that the -- the -- the tension in the global system. It is both liberating and destroying. It is -- It is sowing new wealth around the world in powerful ways that are -- that are very promising. And at the same time, it is -- it is undercutting the -- the -- the potential for democracy in some countries by pitting elites against working class and the poor, by -- by subverting sovereignty of those countries to work out their own social structure and arrangements of -- of civil social contracts.

And it -- it -- I mean, it's hard for people to get their minds around these contradictory notions that it ain't all good and it ain't all bad, it is these two things in collision that are -- that are part of the dynamic. And we above all of the rich nations are responsible for the consequences of that because we above all have been the promoter, the generator of the globalization and -- and its benefactor and guarantor. I mean, when you look at who props up the system in the hard places, it's the United States. And who advances the new trade agreements? It's the United States. So, it's a little late i

n the day for Americans to say this is not our problem. We -- In some ways, again, both positively and negatively, we created the -- the presence of globalization and -- and I think it's -- it's not an option to walk away from it. We ought to take an internationalist, positive, humanitarian view of -- of the world's potential and then to begin to work on that. That -- I don't see that happening in this country at all from either end of the political spectrum.

CDI: Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Greider.

GREIDER: Yes. Enjoyed it a lot.