Controlling the World

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank made it easy for the Chinese to play their trump card. They allowed themselves to make gross misjudgements. Instead of looking to the shadows that outline the future world order, and to develop their strategies accordingly, they were caught up in their familiar neo-liberal ideological framework.1 As American interests are very strongly represented in the IMF, its managers during the 1997/98 Asian crisis firstly ensured that this did not flow over to the USA, and then administered the financial shot in the arm to the affected Asian countries dependent on how far these were willing to open up to the international financial markets and trade. In addition to this they have always paid attention to only letting countries ascend only under condition in which Washington maintain a strong influence, and in which above all American interests of world dominance were assured. ‘Sometimes the conditions seemed to be hardly anything more than simple demonstrations of power’, is how Josef Stiglitz, the World Bank’s former chief political economist describes the situation.2