Articles by Walden Bello

We found 41 results.


Crisis in the West, Opportunity for the Rest?
Walden Bello | CounterPunch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Jul 2024

17 Jul 2024 – The crisis of U.S. hegemony may lead to a deeper crisis or to opportunity. Like Ulysses, we cannot avoid the dangerous passage between Scylla and Charybdis to get to the promised safe harbor.

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Palestine Lights the Way Forward
Walden Bello | FPIF – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Mar 2024

22 Feb 2024 – In these worst of times, still there is hope.

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The Three Revolutions of the Chinese Communist Party
Walden Bello | Human Wrongs Watch - TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Jul 2021

The Communist Party of China led three revolutions of world-historic significance in its short 100-year-history: national liberation, the “Cultural Revolution,” and China’s rapid capitalist transformation. Reflecting on the meaning of the 100th anniversary on 1 Jul 2021 of one of the most important institutions of our time, the Chinese Communist Party, the first thing that entered my head was that the present does change the significance of the past.

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The Face of Things to Come
Walden Bello | Human Wrongs Watch - TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2021

7 Jan 2021 – The storming of Capitol shows America has entered the Weimar Era.

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The Racist Underpinnings of the American Way of War
Walden Bello | Foreign Policy In Focus - TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2020

1 Jul 2020 – The deadly interplay of racism, genocide, and denial at the heart of American white society has been reproduced in the country’s wars. The political economy of the U.S. is built on two “original sins:” genocide of Native Americans to clear the ground for capitalist relations of production, and slave labor of African Americans. The reproduction and expansion of U.S. capitalism over time have consistently reproduced its racial structures.

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The Race to Replace a Dying Neoliberalism
Walden Bello | Foreign Policy In Focus - TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 May 2020

13 May 2020 – The world’s prevailing socio-political models aren’t going to survive this pandemic. What’s going to replace them? In response to the cataclysm occasioned by the coronavirus, three lines of thinking are emerging.

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Duterte Does the Right Thing for a Change
Walden Bello | Foreign Policy In Focus – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Feb 2020

19 Feb 2020 – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s termination of a key military pact with the United States, the Visiting Forces Agreement, which governed the deployment of US troops in the country, has evoked varied responses. He might be the devil incarnate, but Duterte is beginning the process of ending over 120 years of colonial subjugation.

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It’s Not only Necessary to Develop an Alternative to Globalization — It’s Entirely Possible
Walden Bello | Foreign Policy In Focus – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Jul 2017

It was the left who diagnosed the ills of globalization. So why is the right eating our lunch?

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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte Is a Wildly Popular Fascist
Walden Bello – The Nation, 16 Jan 2017

Now what? Instead of creeping repression, the new Philippine president began his reign with a blitzkrieg of extra-judicial killings, stupefying the country and blazing a new trail for fascism.

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Revisiting the Lessons of the Battle of Seattle and Its Aftermath
Walden Bello | Transnational Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Sep 2016

Walden Bello shares some reflections on the meaning of Seattle for change in knowledge systems, discusses how despite the deep crisis of neoliberalism, finance capital has managed to retain tremendous power, and appeals for a new comprehensive vision of the desirable society.

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People Are Likening the Next Philippine President to Donald Trump. Here’s Why.
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy In Focus, 23 May 2016

A hapless elite, an angry electorate, and a brash front-runner with little regard for democratic norms: The latest Philippine election sounds a lot like America’s.

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Slavery, Genocide, Abuse: The Dark Side of Asia’s ‘Tiger Economies’
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy In Focus, 29 Jun 2015

From declining worker protections to violent labor trafficking and ethnic cleansing, the dark underbelly of Southeast Asia’s “tiger economies” is on full display this year.

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The U.S. Military Just Plunged Philippine Politics into Crisis
Walden Bello – The Nation, 23 Mar 2015

American fingerprints are all over a botched commando raid in the southern Philippines that left dozens dead and shocked the country.

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How the Left Failed France’s Muslims
Walden Bello, TeleSur – Foreign Policy In Focus, 16 Feb 2015

In a different world, Cherif and Said Kouachi might have become progressive activists. But where the left abdicated its outreach to marginalized communities, the Islamists moved in.

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How Liberal Democracy Promotes Inequality
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy In Focus, 15 Dec 2014

Western-style democracies — not the dictatorships they replaced — have allowed deeply undemocratic economic systems to flourish. So what’s to be done? The evidence from Thomas Piketty, the UN and other sources is quite conclusive: Neoliberalism is to blame. The old Marxist term “bourgeois democracy” is still the best description for this kind of democratic regime.

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The BRICS: Challengers to the Global Status Quo
Walden Bello – Foreing Policy In Focus, 8 Sep 2014

Can the BRICS wrest control of the global economy from the United States and Europe, or will their internal contradictions tear them apart?

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What the World Cup Can Teach Progressives about Corruption
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy In Focus, 21 Jul 2014

Fighting corruption is a proven means to reduce inequality. But the issue has often been co-opted by elites looking to do just the opposite.

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Class War: Thailand’s Military Coup
Walden Bello – The Nation, 2 Jun 2014

Thailand’s military coup is a victory for the country’s elites and middle classes [Yellowshirts]. But the country’s rural majority [Redshirts] is unlikely to stand aside while the elites dictate a new constitution.

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Obama in Asia: Washington Extracts Rent-free Basing from the Philippines
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy In Focus, 5 May 2014

What the agreement boils down to is that the Philippines will give the United States the right to operate bases in the country—for no rent—without the guarantee of U.S. protection of the country’s island territories.

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Thailand’s Edsa 2: From Civil Conflict to Uncivil War?
Walden Bello – CETRI-Centre Tricontinental, 3 Mar 2014

With no third force to break the deadlock, there is no prospect in sight except deeper and sharper polarization. If Yingluck is ousted, it will be the turn of the Redshirts to invade Bangkok.

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Thailand’s Deep Divide
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy In Focus, 3 Feb 2014

Thailand’s anti-corruption protesters appear to have lost faith in the key tenet of representative democracy: rule by people or parties elected by the majority of citizens.

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Spineless in Bali
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy In Focus, 23 Dec 2013

Developed countries are still using the WTO to squeeze small farmers in the developing world–and developing world governments are going along with the charade.

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GMO Wars: The Global Battlefield
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy In Focus, 4 Nov 2013

The GMO wars escalated earlier this month [October] when the 2013 World Food Prize was awarded to three chemical company executives, including Monsanto executive VP and chief technology officer, Robert Fraley, responsible for development of genetically modified organisms.

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The Crisis of Humanitarian Intervention (Revisited)
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, 11 Sep 2013

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Events in Libya and Syria have again brought to the forefront the question of armed humanitarian intervention or the “responsibility to protect.”

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A Brewing Storm in the Western Pacific
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, 26 Aug 2013

China’s aggressive territorial claims, Washington’s “pivot” to Asia, and Japan’s hawkish bluster add up to a volatile brew in the Asia-Pacific.

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I’ll Miss Hugo
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, 18 Mar 2013

His was a life that was larger than life, from the Caracas riots against the IMF in 1989 to his failed coup in 1992, and from his victory in the 1998 presidential election to his reinstatement by the urban poor when the right removed him in a coup in 2002. Along with Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Chavez put an end to the reign of neoliberal IMF policies that had impoverished the masses. Goodbye, Comandante Hugo. You were a class act, one impossible to follow. Wherever you are right now, give ’em hell.

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Washington Debates the Pivot to Asia
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, 25 Feb 2013

Over the last two years, the Obama administration has executed what the president has termed the “Pivot to Asia” strategy, whereby the United States’ global military force posture is being reconfigured to focus on the Asia-Pacific region as Washington’s central front. The truth of the matter is that, as in the Middle East and Latin America, there is more continuity with the Bush administration than rupture in the Obama administration’s approach toward Asia.

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China’s Transformation: A Southeast Asian Perspective
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, 26 Nov 2012

China’s once-in-a-decade leadership transition will have major implications for China’s neighbors in Southeast Asia. Given this, it might be worthwhile to review the changing understanding of the momentous developments in China on the part of people in our region, using my generation—the so-called “baby boomers”—as an example.

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Economic Crisis Shakes Old Paradigms
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, 29 Oct 2012

Many of the same people who brought you the global financial crisis are also behind the global ecological crisis, observes Walden Bello. To find a common solution to both, we need to search for new models.

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The Apple Connection
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, 13 Feb 2012

Apple’s products are top of the line, distinguished by their superior design, engineering, and personality or “soul.” The iPad and iPhone are engineering masterpieces. But these commodities are not simply material. They also incarnate the social relations of production. They are the expression of the marriage between a demanding enterprise that has become the cutting edge corporation of our time and what Slavoj Zizek has called today’s “ideal capitalist state”: China, with the freedom it offers capital along with its unparalleled capacity to discipline labor.

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The Crisis of Humanitarian Intervention
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, 15 Aug 2011

Events in Libya and Syria have again brought to the forefront the question of armed humanitarian intervention or the “responsibility to protect.” Perhaps there is no better way to sum up the tragic odyssey of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention than by invoking the old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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Capital Is a Fickle Lover
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, 27 Jun 2011

“China is today the ideal capitalist state: freedom for capital, with the state doing the ‘dirty job’ of controlling the workers,” writes the prominent Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. “China as the emerging power of the twenty first century… seems to embody a new kind of capitalism: disregard for ecological consequences, disdain for workers’ rights, everything subordinated to the ruthless drive to develop and become the new world force.”
Capital, however, is a fickle lover.

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The Arab Revolutions and the Democratic Imagination
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, 28 Mar 2011

Breaching the psychological barrier of fear was coupled with another feeling that ran through the crowds in both Tahrir Square and Manila: the sense that people were truly determining their destiny, that they were taking matters into their own hands. This was the primordial democratic moment, the pristine moment of self-rule that is so inadequately conveyed by theoretical treatises on democracy.

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Lessons of the Obama Debacle
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, 18 Oct 2010

The key problem is the failure of progressives to translate their vision and values into a program that is convincing and connects with the people trapped in the terrible existential conditions created by the global financial crisis. This fluid process is preeminently political. It requires translating a strategic perspective into a tactical program that takes advantage of the opportunities, ambiguities, and contradictions of the present moment to construct a critical mass for progressive change from diverse class and social forces.

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WHY FIGHTING CORRUPTION IS NOT ENOUGH
Walden Bello – Inquirer, 12 Apr 2010

Corruption is blamed by most Filipinos for its economic quagmire, but it has been neoliberal policies and clean-cut technocrats who have been most responsible for causing poverty.

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LESSONS OF THE GAZA FREEDOM MARCH
Walden Bello – Foreign Policy in Focus, 9 Jan 2010

At 8 a.m., on Wednesday, December 30, I took my seat on a bus in downtown Cairo that was about to head for Gaza.The evening before, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, the central organization in the Gaza Freedom March (GFM), had asked me to be titular head of a 100-person delegation that represented the […]

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HOW HYPER-CAPITALISM MAY HOBBLE THE COPENHAGEN SUMMIT
Walden Bello - ZNet, 11 Dec 2009

Unless we re-think the export-oriented capitalism that’s causing all of our climate problems, the Copenhagen conference will be nothing more than a Band-Aid. Beginning in the second week of December, representatives to the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen will wrestle with the challenge of climate change. This week, influential actors in the World Trade Organization […]

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THE VIRTUES OF DEGLOBALIZATION
Walden Bello, 10 Sep 2009

The current global downturn, the worst since the Great Depression 70 years ago, pounded the last nail into the coffin of globalization. Already beleaguered by evidence that showed global poverty and inequality increasing, even as most poor countries experienced little or no economic growth, globalization has been terminally discredited in the last two years. As […]

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KEYNES: A MAN FOR THIS SEASON?
Walden Bello, 14 Jul 2009

One of the most significant consequences of the collapse of neoliberal economics, with its worship of the "self-regulating market," has been the revival of the great English economist John Maynard Keynes. Not only do his writings make Keynes very contemporary. There is also the mood that permeates them, which evokes the loss of faith in […]

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CHINA: THE PARTY AND THE PEASANTRY
Walden Bello, 30 Jun 2009

Political sociologists have sometimes described the Chinese Revolution as the product of an alliance between middle class intellectuals and the peasantry. In his innovative revision of Marxist-Leninist theory, Mao Zedong transformed the peasantry, a class disdained by Marx, into the "main force" of his anti-feudal, anti-imperialist revolution. Translated into practice by the Communist Party, which […]

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ASIA: THE COMING FURY
Walden Bello, 10 Feb 2009

As goods pile up in wharves from Bangkok to Shanghai, and workers are laid off in record numbers, people in East Asia are beginning to realize they aren’t only experiencing an economic downturn but living through the end of an era. For over 40 years now, the cutting edge of the region’s economy has been […]

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