ACTIVIST REVIEWS
LINES OF INEQUALITY
Power Lines: U.S. Domination in the New Global Order, by Alejandro Bendaņa (Olive Branch Press, 1996), 250pp, $18.95.

Reviewed by Chris Ney

For some, the end of the Cold War meant the conclusion of a deadly conflict that had dominated and threatened our lives for decades. The new era promised greater security and prosperity-even a Pax Americana. For others, the conclusion of the East-West conflict signified an intensification of the North-South conflict, leading to greater poverty and oppression, increased violence-even the complete consolidation of the North American empire. Power Lines tells the story of the world system from the latter perspective, from the South. It is indispensable reading for anyone hoping to make sense of the post-Berlin Wall world, the New World Order, and the dynamics of the global economy.

Power Lines author Alejandro Bendaņa is scholarly, but not academic. The patterns of domination he describes so clearly are quite literally questions of life and death. As Secretary-General of Nicaragua's Foreign Ministry during the Sandinista government, he witnessed firsthand the full impact of U.S. domination as the Reagan Administration sought systematically to disable the Nicaraguan revolution. Ironically, the Sandinistas (not the U.S. administration) were held accountable for the patterns of violence and poverty that they sought to overcome. Today Bendaņa is Director of the Center for International Studies in Managua. His book is well documented with references to scholarly, NGO, and popular literature. Bendaņa's footnotes allow the reader to trace his sources, but they do not stifle his prose. His analysis is sophisticated and nuanced, but his writing is accessible and compelling.

Power Lines opens with a review of the impact of structural adjustment programs on the Third World. Those programs-imposed by the World Bank, the IMF or other multilateral lending agencies-require governments to reduce their social spending to qualify for additional development assistance. The impact on the poor is devastating: More than six million children under the age of five die each year in Africa, Asia and Latin America as a result of structural adjustment programs. The impact on the rich is less well-known: The number of billionaires in the world increased from 145 to 358 during the seven-year period from 1987 to 1994. "Together they control a capital of $761.9 billion, about the equivalent to the annual per-capita income of 45 percent of the world's population," says Bendaņa.

Yet Bendaņa's analysis is not simply Third World economic nationalism. He recognizes that the transnationalization of capital, and of poverty, cuts against any simple appeals to nationalistic solidarity. He cites the pockets of extreme poverty that exist in the Northern hemisphere and the pockets of extreme wealth in the Southern hemisphere and incorporates an understanding that each group has more in common with their peers on the other side of the globe than they do with people in their own nation.

After reminding the reader that an explicit goal of the United Nations and other institutions created after the Second World War is to foster more equal economic relations among nations, he examines the emerging outlines of economic and military power around the globe, debunking the mythology of free-market advocates. He shows in great detail that national governments in the First World, principally the United States, are more than willing to intervene in bilateral and multilateral economic relationships when it serves their interests. Bendaņa's critique of Clinton's Mexico bailout following the collapse of the peso provides an excellent case study. Not limited to U.S.-Latin American relations, he examines the "emerging markets" of East Asia, their relationship to Japan and the competition between Japan and the U.S.

Further, he draws the links between the struggle against militarism and the struggle for economic justice-and his approach resonates well with pacifists:

The transnationalization of popular struggles is a goal which is first approached by battles waged at home, even if there are no short-term "domestic" solutions in sight. Socializing local economies to develop human resources may be a starting point, remembering that the method of building power defines the eventual nature and potential of that power. Method is critical because alternative forms of power (popular movements) and global governance will not be defined only by economic criteria, but primarily by the nature of the local relations, between genders, and between people and authorities.

Bendaņa offers no simple solutions or political program as a response to the Power Lines he describes so well. Any response depends on a clear understanding of the challenges we face as progressive activists. Bendaņa's book brings us closer than most to that understanding in these confusing times.

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