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Notes
From
the Editors
Ecology,
Capitalism, and the Socialization of Nature
John Bellamy Foster
interviewed by Dennis Soron
U.S.
Imperialism, Europe, and the Middle East
by Samir Amin
After the
Referendum: Venezuela Faces New Challenges
by Marta Harnecker
The Disciplinary
Apparatus of Welfare Reform
by Janine
Fitzgerald
Five O'clock,
January 2003
by Adrienne Rich
Samir
Amin is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His
recent books include Obsolescent Capitalism: Contemporary Politics and
Global Disorder (Zed Books, 2004) and The Liberal Virus:
Permanent War and the Americanization of the World (Monthly
Review Press, 2004).
This is an
abridgement of “The U.S. Imperialism and the Middle East” in Pratyush
Chandra, Anuradha Ghosh, and Ravi Kumar, eds., The Politics of
Imperialism and Counterstrategies (Delhi, India: Aakar Books,
2004).U.S. Imperialism, Europe, and the Middle East |
The analysis proposed here regarding the role of Europe and the Middle
East in the global imperialist strategy of the United States is set in a
general historical vision of capitalist expansion that I have developed
elsewhere.1 In this view capitalism has
always been, since its inception, by nature, a polarizing system, that is,
imperialist. This polarization—the concurrent construction of dominant
centers and dominated peripheries, and their reproduction deepening in
each stage—is inherent in the process of accumulation of capital operating
on a global scale.
In this theory of the global expansion of capitalism the qualitative
changes in the systems of accumulation, from one phase of its history to
another, shape the successive forms of asymmetric centers/peripheries
polarization, that is, of concrete imperialism. The contemporary world
system will thus remain imperialist (polarizing) throughout the visible
future, in so far as its fundamental logic remains dominated by capitalist
production relations. This theory associates imperialism with the process
of capital accumulation on a worldwide scale, which I consider as
constituting a single reality whose various dimensions are in fact not
separable. Thus it differs as much from the vulgarized version of the
Leninist theory of “imperialism, the highest phase of capitalism” (as if
the former phases of global expansion of capitalism were not polarizing),
as from the contemporary postmodern theories that describe the new
globalization as “post-imperialist.”
1. Permanent Conflict of Imperialisms with Collective
Imperialism
In its globalized deployment, imperialism was always conjugated in the
plural, from its inception (in the sixteenth century) until 1945. The
permanent and often violent conflict of imperialisms has occupied as
decisive a place in the transformation of the world as class struggle,
through which the fundamental contradictions of capitalism are expressed.
Moreover, social strife and conflicts among imperialisms are closely
articulated, and it is this articulation that has determined the course of
really existing capitalism. The analysis that I have proposed in this
respect differs vastly from that of the “succession of
hegemonies.”2
The Second World War ended in a major transformation in the forms of
imperialism, substituting for the multiplicity of imperialisms in
permanent conflict a collective imperialism. This collective imperialism
represented the ensemble of the centers of the world capitalist system, or
more simply, the triad: the United States and its external Canadian
province, western and central Europe, and Japan. This new form of
imperialist expansion has gone through various phases of its development,
but it has been present ever since 1945. The hegemonic role of the United
States must be located within this perspective, and every instance of this
hegemony needs to be specified in its relation with the new collective
imperialism. These questions pose problems, which are precisely those that
I would wish to point out here.
The United States benefited enormously from the Second World War, which
had ruined its principal contenders—Europe, the Soviet Union, China, and
Japan. It was thus in a position to exert its economic hegemony, since
more than half of global industrial production was concentrated in the
United States, especially the technologies that would shape the
development of the second half of the century. In addition, it alone
possessed nuclear weapons—the new total weapon.
These dual advantages were nevertheless eroded in a relatively short
period of time (within two decades) by dual recoveries, economic for
capitalist Europe and Japan, and military for the Soviet Union. We must
remember that this relative retreat of U.S. power resulted in lively
speculation about American decline, contemplating even the ascent of
possible alternative hegemonies (including Europe, Japan, and later
China).
Gaullism was born at this time. Charles de Gaulle believed that the
objective of the United States since 1945 had been to control the entire
Old World (Eurasia). Washington had positioned itself strategically to
divide Europe—which in de Gaulle’s view spanned from the Atlantic to the
Urals including “Soviet Russia”—by invoking the specter of aggression from
Moscow, a specter in which de Gaulle never believed. His analysis was
realistic, but he found himself almost alone. To the Atlanticism promoted
by Washington he envisioned a counterstrategy founded on Franco-German
reconciliation and the construction of a non-American Europe carefully
excluding Great Britain, which he judged rightly to be the Trojan horse of
Atlanticism. Europe could then open the way to reconciliation with “Soviet
Russia.” Reconciling and drawing together the three big European
populations—French, German and Russian—would put a definite end to the
American project of dominating the world. The internal conflict specific
to the European project can thus be summarized as the choice between two
alternatives: Atlantic Europe, in which Europe is an appendage of the
American project, or non-Atlantic Europe (integrating Russia). This
conflict is still not resolved. But later developments—the end of
Gaullism, Great Britain’s admission to the European Union, Europe’s
expansion toward the east, the Soviet collapse—have combined to vitiate
the European project by its dual dilution in neoliberal economic
globalization and in the political-military alignment with Washington.
Moreover, these developments reinforce the strength of the collective
character of triad imperialism.
2. The Project of the U.S. Ruling Class: Globalize the Monroe
Doctrine
The present U.S. project, overweening, even crazy, and criminal in its
implications, did not spring from the head of George W. Bush to be
implemented by an extreme right junta that seized power through dubious
elections. This is the project the U.S. ruling class has unceasingly
nurtured since 1945, even though its implementation passed through ups and
downs and could not always be pursued with the consistency and violence
demonstrated since the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
The project always allocated a decisive role to its military dimension.
Very quickly, the United States devised a global military strategy,
dividing the planet into regions and allocating the responsibility for the
control of each of them to a U.S. Military Command. The objective was not
only to encircle the Soviet Union (and China), but also to secure the
position of Washington as the ruler of last resort throughout the world.
In other words, it extended the Monroe Doctrine to the entire planet,
which effectively gave to the United States the exclusive right of
managing the whole globe in accordance with what it defined as its
national interests.
This project implies that the sovereignty of the national interests of
the United States is to be placed above all other principles controlling
legitimate political behavior; it engenders a systematic mistrust toward
all supranational rights. Certainly, imperialisms of the past did not
behave differently, and those who endeavor to minimize and excuse the
responsibilities—and the criminal behavior—of the present U.S.
establishment make use of this argument and can readily find historical
antecedents.
But this is precisely what one would have liked to see change in the
history which began after 1945. It is because the horrors of the Second
World War were produced by the conflict of imperialisms and the fascist
powers’ contempt for international law, that the UN was founded on a new
principle proclaiming the illegitimate character of the previously
established sovereign right to wage war. The United States, it could be
said, not only identified itself with this new principle, but had been
among the first powers to do so.
This good initiative—supported at the time by the people of the entire
world—represented indeed a qualitative jump and opened the way for the
progress of civilization, but never won the conviction of the ruling class
of the United States. The authorities in Washington always felt ill at
ease with the concept of the UN, and today brutally proclaim what they
were forced to conceal up until now: that they do not accept even the
concept of an international law superior to what they consider to be the
exigencies of the defense of their own national interests. We cannot
accept excuses for this return to a vision developed by the Nazis, which
accompanied the destruction of the League of Nations. The plea in favor of
international law, developed with talent and elegance by French Foreign
Minister Dominique de Villepin at the Security Council, is not a nostalgic
look toward the past but on the contrary a reminder of what the future
must be. On that occasion it was the United States which defended a past
that all decent opinion had definitively proclaimed obsolete. The
implementation of the U.S. project necessarily went through successive
phases, shaped by the particular power relations that defined them.
Immediately after the Second World War American leadership was not only
accepted but even solicited by the bourgeoisie of Europe and Japan. For
while the menace of a Soviet invasion could convince only the
feeble-minded, its invocation rendered good services to the right as well
as to social democrats hounded by their adversary communist cousins. One
could then believe that the collective character of the new imperialism
was only due to this political factor and that, once their backwardness in
relation to the United States was overcome, Europe and Japan would seek to
get rid of Washington’s cumbersome and henceforth useless supervision.
That was not the case. Why?
My explanation appeals to the rise of the national liberation movements
in Asia and Africa—during the two decades following the 1955 Bandung
Conference which gave birth to the movement of nonaligned nations—and to
the support they enjoyed from the Soviet Union and China (each in its own
way). Imperialism was then forced to make do, thus not only accepting
peaceful coexistence with a vast area which largely escaped its control
(the socialist world) but also negotiating the terms of the participation
of the Asian and African countries in the imperialist world system. The
collective alignment of the triad under American leadership seemed useful
for managing the North-South relationships of the epoch. This is why the
non-aligned nations found themselves confronted with a practically
indivisible Western bloc.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the smothering of the populist
nationalist regimes born from national liberation movements permitted the
imperial project of the United States to be deployed with extreme vigor in
the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. True, the project remains in
the service of collective imperialism, at least up to a certain point
(which I will try to clarify later). Its expression has come to be the
economic government of the world on the basis of the principles of
neoliberalism, implemented by the G-7 and the institutions at its service
(the WTO, World Bank, and IMF), and the structural readjustment plans
imposed on the suffocating third world. Even on the political level, it is
clear that initially the Europeans and Japanese aligned themselves with
the U.S. project. They accepted the marginalization of the UN for the
benefit of NATO at the time of the 1991 Gulf War and the 2002 wars in
Yugoslavia and Central Asia. This stage is still not over, even if the
2003 war on Iraq revealed some cracks in the facade.
The ruling class of the United States proclaims openly that it will not
tolerate the reconstitution of any economic and military power capable of
questioning its monopoly of domination over the planet, and for this
purpose, it gave itself the right to wage preventive wars. Three principal
potential adversaries are targeted here.
In the first place is Russia, whose dismemberment, after that of the
USSR, constitutes henceforth a major strategic objective of the United
States. The Russian ruling class does not appear to have understood this
yet. It seems convinced that after having lost the war, it could win the
peace, as had been the case for Germany and Japan. It forgets that
Washington needed the recovery of these two former adversaries precisely
to face the Soviet challenge. The new situation is different; the United
States no longer has a serious competitor. Their first option is then to
destroy the ravaged Russian adversary permanently and completely. Will
Putin understand this and initiate the process of weaning the Russian
ruling class of its illusions? In the second place is China, whose growth
and economic success worry the United States. The U.S. strategic objective
is to dismember this large country.
Europe comes third in this global vision of the new masters of the
world. But here the North American establishment does not appear anxious,
at least so far. The unconditional Atlanticism of a few (Great Britain, as
well as the new servile powers of the East), the quicksand of the European
project (a point to which I will return), and the converging interests of
the dominant capital of the collective imperialism of the triad, all
contribute to the effacement of the European project. It remains the
European wing of the U.S. project as the diplomacy of Washington has
managed to keep Germany obedient. The reunification and the conquest of
Eastern Europe even seemed to reinforce this alliance. Germany was
encouraged to reclaim its tradition of thrust toward the east, and the
part played by Berlin in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia by the hasty
recognition of Slovenian and Croatian independence was its expression. For
the rest, Germany has been induced to navigate in Washington’s wake. Is
there any change in progress? The German political class appears hesitant
and may well be divided as far as its strategic choices are concerned. The
alternative to the Atlanticist alignment is a reinforcement of the nascent
Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis, which would then become the most solid pillar of
a European system independent of Washington.
Our main question can now be reconsidered, that is, the nature and
potential strength of the triad’s collective imperialism, and the
contradictions and weaknesses of its leadership by the United States.
3. Collective Imperialism of the Triad and Hegemony of the
United States: Their Articulation and Contradictions
Today’s world is militarily unipolar. At the same time, some fissures
seem to have appeared between the United States and some of the European
countries with regard, in theory at least, to the political management of
a global system united on the principles of liberalism. Are these fissures
only temporary and limited, or do they proclaim some lasting changes? It
will be necessary to analyze in all their complexity the logics of the new
phase of collective imperialism (North-South relationships in the current
language) and the specific objectives of the U.S. project. In this spirit
I will approach succinctly and successively five sets of questions:
Concerning the Evolution of the New Collective
Imperialism
The formation of the new collective imperialism finds its origin in the
transformation of the conditions of competition. Only a few decades ago,
the large firms fought their competitive battles essentially over national
markets, whether that of the United States (the largest national market in
the world) or those of the European states (in spite of their modest size,
which handicapped them in relation to the United States). The winners of
the national contests could perform well on the world market. Today the
size of the market necessary for gaining an upper hand in the first cycle
of competition encompasses some 500–600 million potential consumers. The
battle must thus be launched straightaway on the global market and won on
this ground. And those who dominate this market then assert their power
over their respective national terrains. Thorough internationalization
becomes the primary setting of the activities of the large firms. In other
words, in the pair national/global, the terms of causality are reversed:
earlier the national power commanded the global presence and today it is
the reverse. Therefore the transnational firms, whatever their
nationality, have common interests in the management of the world market.
These interests are superimposed on the various mercanti1e conflicts,
which define all the forms of competition specific to capitalism,
irrespective of what they are.
The solidarity of the dominant segments of transnationalized capital of
all the partners in the triad is real, and is expressed by their rallying
to globalized neoliberalism. The United States is seen from this
perspective as the defender (militarily if necessary) of these common
interests. Nonetheless, Washington does not intend to share equitably the
profits of its leadership. The United States seeks, on the contrary, to
reduce its allies into vassals and thus is only ready to make minor
concessions to junior allies in the triad. Will this conflict of interests
within dominant capital lead to the break-up of the Atlantic alliance? Not
impossible, but unlikely.
Concerning the Place of the United States in the World
Economy
A common opinion has it that U.S. military power only constitutes the
tip of the iceberg, extending the country’s superiority in all areas,
notably economic, but even political and cultural. Therefore, submission
to the hegemony to which it pretends would be impossible to avoid.
I maintain, to the contrary, that in the system of collective
imperialism the United States does not have decisive economic advantages.
The U.S. production system is far from being the most efficient in the
world. In fact, very few of its sectors would be certain of beating
competitors in the truly free market dreamt of by liberal economists. The
U.S. trade deficit, which increases year by year, went from 100 billion
dollars in 1989 to 500 billion in 2002. Moreover, this deficit involved
practically all areas of production. Even the surplus once enjoyed by the
United States in the area of high-technology goods, which stood at 35
billion in 1990, has now turned into a deficit. Competition between Ariane
rockets and those of NASA, between Airbus and Boeing, testifies to the
vulnerability of the American advantages. The United States is faced by
European and Japanese competition in high-technology products, Chinese,
Korean, and other Asian and Latin American industrialized countries in
common manufactured products, and by Europe and the southern cone of Latin
America in agriculture. The United States probably would not be able to
win were it not for its recourse to extra-economic means, violating the
principles of liberalism imposed on its competitors!
In fact, the United States only benefits from comparative advantages in
the armaments sector, precisely because this sector largely operates
outside the rules of the market and benefits from state support. This
advantage probably brings certain benefits for the civil sphere in its
wake (the Internet being the best-known example), but it also causes
serious distortions that handicap many sectors of production.
The North American economy lives parasitically, to the detriment of its
partners in the world system. “The United States depends for 10 percent of
its industrial consumption on goods whose import costs are not covered by
the exports of its own products,” as Emmanuel Todd recalls.3 The world produces, and the United States (which
has practically no national saving) consumes. The advantage of
the United States is that of a predator whose deficit is covered by loans
from others, whether by consent or force. Washington has employed three
primary means to compensate for these deficiencies: repeated unilateral
violations of liberal principles; arms exports; and a search for greater
profits from oil (which presupposes systematic control over the
producers—one of the real reasons for the wars in Central Asia and Iraq).
The fact is that the essential part of the U.S. deficit is covered by
contributions of capital from Europe, Japan, and the South (from oil-rich
countries and comprador classes of every country of the third world, the
poorest included), to which are added the additional sums brought in from
servicing the debt that has been forced on almost all the countries on the
periphery of the world system.
The growth of the Clinton years, flaunted as the result of a liberalism
that Europe was unfortunately resisting, was in fact largely fake, and in
any case, nongeneralizable, depending on capital transfers that meant the
stagnation of partner economies. For all sectors of the real production
system, U.S. growth was not better than that of Europe. The American
miracle was fed exclusively by a growth in expenditure produced by growing
social inequalities (financial and personal services, legions of lawyers,
and private police forces). In this sense, Clinton’s liberalism indeed
prepared the conditions for the reactionary wave, and later the victory of
Bush Junior.
The causes of the weakening of the U.S. production system are complex.
They are certainly not conjunctural, and they cannot be corrected by the
adoption of a correct rate of exchange, for example, or by putting in
place a more favorable balance between salaries and productivity. They are
structural. The mediocrity of general education and training systems, and
a deep-rooted prejudice systematically in favor of the private to the
detriment of public services, are among the main reasons for the profound
crisis that U.S. society is going through.
One should, therefore, be surprised that the Europeans, far from
drawing the conclusions that observation of the deficiencies of the U.S.
economy forces upon one, are actively going about imitating it. Here, too,
the liberal virus does not explain everything, even if it fulfills some
useful functions for the system in paralyzing the left. Widespread
privatization and the dismantling of public services will only reduce the
comparative advantages that “Old Europe” (as Bush qualifies it) still
enjoys. However, whatever damage these things will cause in the long term,
such measures offer dominant capital, which lives in the short term, the
chance of making additional profits.
Concerning the Specific Objectives of the U.S. Project
The hegemonic strategy of the United States is within the framework of
the new collective imperialism.
Conventional economists do not have the analytical tools necessary to
understand the paramount importance of these objectives. They are heard
repeating ad nauseam that in the new economy the raw materials
coming from the third world are destined to lose their importance and thus
the third world is becoming more and more marginal in the world system. In
counterpoint to this naive and hollow discourse we have the Mein Kampf
of the Bush administration,4 and
surely it must be acknowledged that the United States works hard for the
right to seize all the natural resources of the planet to meet its
consumption requirements. The race for raw materials (oil in the first
place, but other resources too—water in particular) has already been
resumed in all its virulence. All the more since these resources are
likely to become scarce not only by reason of the malignant waste inherent
in Western consumerism, but also by the development of the new
industrialization of the peripheries.
Moreover, a respectable number of countries from the South are destined
to become increasingly important industrial producers as much for their
internal markets as for their roles in the world market. As importers of
technologies, of capital, also as competitors in exports, they are
destined to disturb the global economic equilibrium with an increasing
weight. And it is not a question only of some East Asian countries (like
Korea), but of immense China and, tomorrow, India and the large countries
of Latin America. However, far from being a factor of stabilization, the
acceleration of capitalist expansion in the South can only be the cause of
violent conflicts—internal and international. The reason is that this
expansion cannot absorb, under existing conditions, the enormous reserve
of labor force that is concentrated in the periphery. In fact, the
peripheries of the system remain the zone of tempests. The centers of the
capitalist system thus need to exert their domination over the peripheries
and to subject the world’s population to the pitiless discipline that the
satisfaction of their priorities requires.
Within this perspective, the American establishment has perfectly
understood that, in the pursuit of its hegemony, it has three decisive
advantages over its European and Japanese competitors: control over the
natural resources of the globe; its military monopoly; and the weight of
the Anglo-Saxon culture by which the ideological domination of capitalism
is best expressed. The systematic manipulation of these three advantages
reveals many aspects of U.S. policy: the systematic efforts that
Washington exerts for the military control of the oil-producing Middle
East; its offensive strategy with regard to China and Korea—taking
advantage of the latter’s “financial crisis”; and its subtle game aiming
at perpetuating divisions in Europe—by mobilizing its unconditional
British ally while preventing any serious rapprochement between the
European Union and Russia. At the level of global control over the
resources of the planet, the United States has a decisive advantage over
Europe and Japan. Not only because the United States is the sole
international military power, and thus no strong intervention in the third
world can be led without it, but more because Europe (excluding the
ex-USSR) and Japan are by themselves largely devoid of essential resources
for their economy. For example, their dependence in the energy sector, in
particular their oil dependence with regard to the Persian Gulf, will
persist for a considerable time, even if it were to decrease in relative
terms. By militarily seizing control of this region through the Iraq war,
the rulers of the United States have demonstrated that they were perfectly
conscious of the utility of this type of pressure, which they bring to
bear on their (allied) competitors. Not long ago the Soviet Union had also
understood this vulnerability of Europe and Japan, and certain Soviet
interventions in the third world sought to remind them of it, so as to
induce them to negotiate on other grounds. It was clear that the
deficiencies of Europe and Japan could be offset in the event of a serious
rapprochement between Europe and Russia (the “common home” of Gorbachev).
This is the very reason that the danger of this construction of Eurasia
remains Washington’s nightmare.
Concerning the Conflicts between the United States and its
Triad Partners
If the partners in the triad share the common interests in the global
management of collective imperialism implied in their relationship with
the South, they are nonetheless in a serious potentially conflictual
relationship.
The American superpower sustains itself due to the capital flow that
feeds the parasitism of its economy and society. This vulnerability of the
United States constitutes, therefore, a serious threat for the Washington
project.
Europe in particular and the rest of the world in general will have to
choose one of the following two strategic options: either invest the
surplus of their capital (that is, savings) so as to provide for the
continuing financing of the U.S. deficit (consumption, investments, and
military expenditures) or conserve and invest this surplus at home.
The conventional economists are ignorant of the problem, having made
the senseless hypothesis that since globalization has supposedly abolished
the nation-state, the primary economic factors (saving and investment)
cannot be managed any more at national levels. But however foolish, the
notion of the identity of saving and investment at the world level is
indeed useful to justify and promote the financing of the U.S. deficit by
others. Such nonsense is a fine instance of tautological reasoning, where
the conclusions at which one wishes to arrive are implied in the very
premise.
Why then is such ineptitude accepted? No doubt, the teams of scholarly
economists who encircle the European (and also Russian and Chinese)
political classes of the right as well as of the electoral left are
themselves victims of their economic alienation, which I term the liberal
virus. Besides, through this option the political judgment of large
transnational capital is expressed. That judgment is that the advantages
attained by the management of the globalized system by the United States
on behalf of collective imperialism prevail over the disadvantages—the
tribute which must be paid to Washington to ensure stability. What is at
issue, after all, is a tribute and not an investment
with a good guaranteed return. There are some countries qualified as
poor indebted countries that are always constrained to service
their debt at any price. But there is also a powerful indebted
country that has the means to devalue its debt if considered
necessary.
The other option for Europe (and the rest of the world) would thus
consist in putting an end to this transfusion in favor of the United
States. The surplus could then be used locally (in Europe), and the
economy revived. The transfusion requires the Europeans to submit to, in
the misleading language of conventional economics, “deflationary policies”
that I term stagnationist—so as to release a surplus of
exportable saving. It makes a recovery in Europe—always mediocre—dependent
on artificial support from the United States. The mobilization of this
surplus for local employment in Europe would permit the simultaneous
revival of consumption (by rebuilding the social dimension of the economic
management devastated by the liberal virus), investment (particularly in
new technologies and research), and even military expenditure (putting an
end to the advantages of the United States in this field). To choose this
response would imply a rebalancing of the social relationships in favor of
the laboring classes. In Europe this remains a possible option for
capital. The contrast between the United States and Europe does not
fundamentally go against the interests of the dominant segments of their
respective capitals. It results above all from the difference of political
cultures.
Concerning Questions of Theory Suggested by the Preceding
Reflections
Complicity and competition between the partners in collective
imperialism for the control of the South—the plundering of the natural
resources and submission of its people—can be analyzed from different
angles of vision. I will make, in this respect, three observations, which
appear major to me.
First, the contemporary world system that I describe as collective
imperialist is no less imperialist than its predecessors. It is
not an “Empire” of “post-capitalist” nature.
Second, I have proposed a reading of the history of capitalism,
globalized right from its origin, centered on the distinction between the
various phases of imperialism (of center/periphery relationships).
Third, internationalization is not synonymous with unification of the
economic system by the deregulated opening up of markets. The
latter—in its successive historical forms (the freedom of trade yesterday,
the freedom of firms today)—always constituted only the project of the
dominant capital of the time. In reality this project was almost always
forced to adjust to requirements that are not the concern of its exclusive
and specific internal logic. It thus could never be implemented except in
some short moments of history. The “free exchange” promoted by
the major industrial power of its time, Great Britain, was effective
only during two decades (1860–1880) and was succeeded by a
century (1880–1980) characterized by the conflict between the
imperialists and the strong de-linking of the socialist countries and the
more modest de-linking of the populist nationalist countries (in the era
of Bandung from 1955 to 1975). The current moment of the reunification of
the world market inaugurated by neoliberalism since 1980, extended to the
whole planet with the Soviet collapse, is probably not destined to
experience a better fate. The chaos that it generates testifies to its
character as the “permanent utopia of capital,” the phrase by which I have
described this system since 1990.
4. The Middle East in the Imperialist System
U.S. Regional
Dominance after the Fall of the USSR
The Middle East, henceforth to be considered together with the
bordering areas of the Caucasus and ex-Soviet Central Asia, occupies a
position of particular importance in the geostrategy and geopolitics of
imperialism, and particularly of the U.S. hegemonic project. It owes this
position to three factors: its oil wealth; its geographical position in
the heart of the Old World; and the fact that it constitutes the soft
underbelly of the world system.
The access to oil at a relatively cheap price is vital for the economy
of the dominant triad, and the best means of ensuring this guaranteed
access consists in securing political control of the area.
But the region also holds its importance equally due to its
geographical position, being at the center of the Old World, at equal
distance from Paris, Beijing, Singapore, and Johannesburg. In the olden
times control over this inevitable crossing point gave the Caliphate the
privilege of drawing the chief benefits from that epoch’s long distance
trade. After the Second World War the region, located on the southern side
of the Soviet Union, was crucial to the military strategy of encircling
Soviet power. And the region did not lose its importance with the collapse
of the Soviet adversary. U.S. dominance in the region reduces Europe,
dependent on the Middle East for its energy supply, to vassalage. Once
Russia was subdued, China and India were also subjected to permanent
energy blackmail. Control over the Middle East would thus allow an
extension of the Monroe Doctrine to the Old World, the objective of the
hegemonist project of the United States. But the continuous and constant
efforts made by Washington since 1945 to secure control over the region,
while excluding the British and French, has not been so far crowned with
success. One recalls the failure of the attempt to attach the region to
NATO through the Baghdad Pact, and the fall of one of their most faithful
allies, the Shah of Iran.
The reason is quite simply that the project of Arab (and Iranian)
nationalist populism entered headlong into conflict with the objectives of
American hegemonism. This Arab project hoped to force the Great Powers to
recognize the independence of the Arab world. The nonaligned movement
formulated in 1955 at Bandung by the ensemble of liberation movements of
Asian and African people was the strongest current of the time. The
Soviets quickly understood that by giving their support to this project
they could set back the aggressive plans of Washington.
This epoch came to an end, in the first instance because the populist
nationalist project of the Arab world quickly exhausted its potential for
transformation, and the nationalist powers sank into dictatorships empty
of either hope or plans for change. The vacuum created by this drift
opened the way for political Islam and the obscurantist autocracies of the
Persian Gulf, the preferred allies of Washington. The region has become
one of the underbellies of the global system, vulnerable to external
intervention (including military) that the current regimes, for a lack of
legitimacy, are incapable of containing or discouraging. The region
constituted, and continues to constitute, a zone of the first priority
(like the Caribbean) within the American geomilitary division of the
entire planet—a zone where the United States is granted the “right” of
military intervention. Since 1990, they are not deprived of anything!
The United States operates in the Middle East in close cooperation with
their two unconditional faithful allies—Turkey and Israel. Europe is kept
away from the region, forced to accept that the United States is defending
the global vital interests of the triad, that is to say its oil supply. In
spite of signs of obvious irritation after the Iraq war, in this region
the Europeans by and large continue to sail in Washington’s wake.
The Role of Israel and the Palestinian Resistance
Israel’s colonial expansionism constitutes a real challenge. Israel is
the only country in the world that refuses to recognize its borders as
definite (and for this reason ought not to have the right to be a member
of the United Nations). Like the United States in the nineteenth century,
it claims the right to conquer new areas for the expansion of its
colonization and to treat the people who had lived there for thousands of
years like “redskins.” Israel is the only country that openly declares
itself not bound by the resolutions of the UN.
The war of 1967, planned in agreement with Washington in 1965, was in
pursuit of several goals: to start the collapse of the populist
nationalist regimes; to break their alliance with the Soviet Union; to
force them to reposition themselves on American terms; and to open new
grounds for Zionist colonization. In the territories conquered in 1967
Israel set up a system of apartheid inspired by that of South Africa.
It is here that the interests of dominant capital meet up with those of
Zionism. A rich, powerful, and modernized Arab world would call into
question the right of the West to plunder its oil resources, which are
necessary for the continuation of the waste associated with capitalist
accumulation. Therefore, the political powers in the countries of the
triad—all faithful servants of dominant transnational capital—do not want
a modernized and powerful Arab world.
The alliance between Western powers and Israel is thus founded on the
solid basis of their common interests. This alliance is neither the
product of European feelings of guilt for anti-Semitism and Nazi crime,
nor that of the skill of the “Jewish lobby” in exploiting this sentiment.
If the Powers thought that their interests were harmed by the Zionist
colonial expansionism, they would quickly find the means of overcoming
their guilt complex and of neutralizing this lobby. This I do not doubt,
not being among those who naively believe that public opinion in the
democratic countries, such as it is, imposes its views on these Powers. We
know that opinion also is manufactured. Israel is incapable of resisting
for more than a few days even moderate measures of a blockade such as the
Western powers inflicted on Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Cuba. It would thus not
be difficult to bring Israel to its senses and to create the conditions of
a true peace, if it were wanted, which it is not.
Shortly after defeat in the 1967 war, Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat
stated that since the United States held “90 percent of the cards” (his
expression), it was necessary to break with the Soviet Union and
reintegrate with the Western camp. He claimed that by doing so, one could
get Washington to exert sufficient pressure on Israel to bring it to its
senses. Beyond similar strategic ideas peculiar to Sadat—whose incoherence
has been proven by events—Arab public opinion remained largely incapable
of understanding the dynamics of the global expansion of capitalism, and
even less capable of identifying its true contradictions and weaknesses.
Is it not still said that “Someday the West will understand that its long
run interest is to maintain good relations with the two hundred million
Arabs and will choose not to sacrifice these relations for unconditional
support for Israel?” This is implicitly to think that the “West” in
question, which is the imperial center of capital, wishes a modernized and
developed Arab world rather than wanting to maintain the Arab world in
impotence, for which support for Israel is manifestly useful.
The choice made by the Arab governments—with the exception of Syria and
Lebanon—which led them by way of the negotiations of Madrid and Oslo
(1993) to subscribe to the American plan of the so-called definitive
peace, could not yield results other than those which it has yielded:
encouraging Israel to solidify its expansionist project. By openly
rejecting the terms of the Oslo contract today, Ariel Sharon demonstrates
merely what was already clear—that it was not a matter of a project for
definitive peace, but of opening a new phase in Zionist colonial
expansion.
Israel and the Western powers supporting its project have imposed a
state of permanent war in the region. In its turn, this state of permanent
war reinforces the autocratic Arab regimes. This blockage of any possible
democratic evolution weakens the chances of an Arabic revival, and thus
reinforces the alliance of the dominant capital with the hegemonist
strategy of the United States. The circle is completed: the
Israeli-American alliance serves perfectly the interests of the two
partners.
Initially the system of apartheid deployed after 1967 gave the
impression of being capable of achieving its ends—the management of
everyday life in the occupied territories by the fearful elites and
commercial bourgeoisie, seemingly with the acceptance of the Palestinian
people. From its remote exile in Tunis the PLO, removed from the region
after the invasion of Lebanon by the Israeli army (1982), appeared no
longer able to call the Zionist annexation into question.
The first Intifada exploded in December 1987. It expressed the sudden
emergence of the popular classes and remarkably of its poorest segments
confined in the refugee camps. The Intifada hamstrung Israeli power by the
organization of systematic civil disobedience. Israel reacted with
brutality, but managed neither to restore its effective police power nor
to place the fearful Palestinian middle classes back in the saddle. On the
contrary, the Intifada called for the mass return of exiled political
forces, the constitution of new local forms of organization, and the
adherence of the middle classes to a committed fight for liberation. The
Intifada was provoked by the youth, chebab al Intifada, initially
not organized within the formal networks of the PLO, but by no means a
hostile competitor to them. The four components of the PLO (Fatah, devoted
to its chief Yasser Arafat, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the
Communist Party) threw themselves into the Intifada and for this reason
gained the sympathy of the major part of the chebab. The Muslim
Brotherhood, sidelined by their inactivity during the preceding years
despite some actions by Islamic Jihad (which made its appearance in 1980),
yielded its place to a new expression of struggle—Hamas, constituted in
1988.
As the first Intifada gave signs of running out of breath after two
years, and with Israeli repression becoming more and more violent
(including the use of firearms against children and closing the green line
to block nearly the only source of income for Palestinian workers), the
scene was set for “negotiation.” The initiative was taken by the United
States, leading first to the Madrid talks (1991), and then to the
so-called Oslo Peace Agreements (1993). These agreements allowed the
return of the PLO to the occupied territories and its transformation into
a Palestinian Authority.
The Oslo agreements imagined the transformation of the occupied
territories into one or more Bantustans, definitively integrated into the
Israeli region. Within this framework, the Palestinian Authority was to be
only a false state—as that of the Bantustans—and in fact to be the
transmission belt of the Zionist order.
Returning to Palestine, the PLO—now the Palestinian Authority—managed
to establish its order, but not without some ambiguities. The authority
absorbed in its new structures the major part of chebab, which
had coordinated the Intifada. It achieved legitimacy by the electoral
consultation of 1996, in which the Palestinians participated en masse (80
percent); an overwhelming majority elected Arafat the president of the
authority. The authority remained nevertheless in an ambiguous position:
would it agree to fulfill the functions that Israel, the United States and
Europe allotted it—that of government of a Bantustan, or would it align
with the Palestinian people who refused to submit?
As the Palestinian people rejected the Bantustan project, Israel
decided to denounce the Oslo agreement, although it had dictated its
terms, and substituted the use of pure and simple military violence. The
provocation at the Jerusalem holy places engineered by the war criminal
Sharon in 1998 (but with the help of the Labor government that furnished
the tanks), and the triumphal election of this same criminal at the head
of the Israeli government (and the collaboration of the doves like Simon
Peres with this government), were the cause of the second Intifada, which
is in progress.
Will this succeed in liberating the Palestinian people from submission
to Zionist apartheid? It is too early to say. In any event, the
Palestinian people now have a true national liberation movement. It has
its own specificities. It does not follow the one party style of
homogeneity (though the reality of single party states was always more
complex). It has components that conserve their own personality, their
visions of the future, including their ideologies, their militants and
clienteles, but which appear to know how to cooperate in leading the
struggle.
The U.S. Project for the Middle East
The erosion of the regimes of populist nationalism and the
disappearance of Soviet support gave the United States the opportunity to
implement its project for the area.
The control of the Middle East is certainly a cornerstone of
Washington’s project of global hegemony. How then does the United States
imagine securing control? It is already a decade since Washington took the
initiative of advancing the curious project of a “Common Market of the
Middle East” in which some countries of the Persian Gulf would have
supplied capital, while other Arab countries supplied cheap labor, and
reserving for Israel technological control and the functions of the
privileged and grateful intermediary. Accepted by the Gulf countries and
Egypt, the project was confronted nevertheless with the refusal of Syria,
Iraq, and Iran. It was thus necessary to knock down these three regimes
for the project to advance. Now that has been done for Iraq.
The question then is what type of political regime must be set up in
order to be able to sustain the project. Washington’s propagandistic
discourse is about “democracies.” In fact, Washington is busy doing
nothing but substituting the so-called Islamic obscurantist autocracies
for the worn-out autocracies of outmoded populism (covering the operation
with drivel about its respect for the cultural specificity of the
communities). The renewed alliance with a so-called moderate political
Islam (one that is capable of controlling the situation with sufficient
efficacy to prohibit the terrorist drifts—defining “terrorist” as threats
directed against, and only against, the United States) now constitutes the
axis of Washington’s political choice. It is within this perspective that
reconciliation will be sought with the antiquated autocracy of the Middle
Eastern social system.
Confronted with the deployment of the U.S. project, Europeans invented
their own project, baptized as the “Euro-Mediterranean partnership.” A
decidedly cowardly project—encumbered with incoherent prattling which, of
course, also proposed to reconcile the Arab countries with Israel. By
excluding the Gulf countries from the Euro-Mediterranean dialogue it was
conceded that the management and control of these latter countries was the
exclusive responsibility of Washington.
The sharp contrast between the bold audacity of the American project
and the debility of the European project is a good indicator that really
existing Atlanticism has no place for a shared responsibility and
association in decision making that would place the United States and
Europe on an equal footing. Tony Blair, who has made himself the
advocate of the construction of a unipolar world, thinks he is able to
justify this option because Atlanticism would be founded on this supposed
sharing. Washington’s arrogance every day reveals this hope to be
illusory, if it has not from the beginning been a bad faith effort to fool
European opinion. The realism of Stalin’s statement that the Nazis “did
not know where it was necessary to stop” is precisely applicable to those
who control the United States. Blair appeals to hopes that resemble only
those placed in Mussolini’s supposed capacity to assuage Hitler.
Is another European option possible? Has it begun to take shape? Does
Chirac’s speech opposing the “unipolar Atlantic” world (which he seemingly
well understands to be in fact synonymous with the unilateral hegemony of
the United States) announce the construction of a multi-polar world and an
end to Atlanticism? For this possibility to become a reality, it would
first be necessary that Europe free itself of the quicksand in which it
slips and sinks.
5. The European Project: Mired in Liberal
Quicksand
All the governments of the European states have been won over to the
theses of liberalism. This regimentation of the European states means
nothing less than the obliteration of the European project by its double
dilution, economic (the advantages of the European economic union are
dissolved in economic globalization) and political (European political and
military autonomy disappears). There is not, at the present time, any
European project. A North Atlantic project (or eventually of the triad)
under American command has been substituted for it.
After the Second World War, Western Europe managed to make up for its
economic and technological backwardness vis-à-vis the United States. After
1989, the Soviet threat was gone as were the violent adversities that had
marked European history during the past century and a half: the three
major countries of the continent—France, Germany, and Russia—are
reconciled. All these developments are, in my opinion, positive and rich
with still more potential. Certainly they are superimposed upon an
economic base restructured by the principles of liberalism. Yet this
liberalism was tempered until the 1980s by the social-democratic
historical compromise that forced capital to adjust itself to the demands
of social justice expressed by the working classes. Afterwards, the
deployment continued in a new social framework inspired by American-style,
antisocial liberalism.
This last turn has plunged the European societies into a
multidimensional crisis. Essentially it is the economic crisis, nothing
more and nothing less, immanent in the liberal choice. The crisis was
aggravated by the European countries falling into line with the economic
requirements of U.S. leadership: Europe consenting up to now to finance
the latter’s deficit to the detriment of its own interests. Then there is
a social crisis, which is accentuated by the rise of resistances and the
struggles of the popular classes against the fatal consequences of the
liberal option. Finally, there is the beginning of a political crisis—the
refusal to align, at least unconditionally, over the U.S. demand for an
endless war against the South.
The made-in-USA wars have certainly stirred up public opinion (the
latest Iraq war has had that effect globally) and even certain
governments, initially that of France and then those of Germany, Russia,
and China, too. The fact remains that these same governments have not
called into question their faithful alignment over the needs of
liberalism. This major contradiction will have to be overcome in one way
or another, either by their submission to the requirements of Washington,
or by a true rupture putting an end to Atlanticism.
The major political conclusion that I draw from this analysis is that
Europe cannot pass beyond Atlanticism as long as political alliances
defining the blocs in power remain centered on dominant transnational
capital. It is only if social and political struggles manage to modify the
content of these blocs, and to impose new historical compromises between
capital and labor, that Europe would be able to distance itself from
Washington, permitting the eventual revival of a European project. Under
these conditions Europe also could—even ought to—become engaged at the
international level in its relationships with the East and the South, on a
path other than that traced by the exclusive requirements of collective
imperialism. Such a course would begin its participation in the long march
beyond capitalism. In other words, Europe will be of the left (the term
left being taken seriously) or will not be at all.
Notes
- Samir Amin, Class and Nation (New York: NYU Press, 1981);
Samir Amin, Eurocentrism, (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1989); Samir Amin, Obsolescent Capitalism (London: Zed Books,
2003); Samir Amin, The Liberal Virus (New York, Monthly Review
Press, 2004).
- The “succession of hegemonies” reading is “Western-centric” in the
sense that it considers that the transformations operating at the heart
of the system command the global evolution of the system in a decisive
and almost exclusive manner. The reactions of the people of the
peripheries to the imperialist deployment should not be underestimated.
The independence of the Americas, the great revolutions made in the name
of socialism (Russia and China), and the reconquest of independence by
the Asian and African countries, were provocations to the system
from the peripheries. And I do not believe that one can account
for the history of world capitalism without accounting for the
adjustments that these transformations imposed even on central
capitalism itself. Then also because the history of imperialism appears
to me to have been shaped more through the conflict of imperialisms than
by the type of order that successive hegemonies have imposed. The
apparent periods of hegemony have been always extremely short and the
said hegemony very relative.
- Emmanuel Todd, After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American
Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).
- Office of the White House, The National Security Strategy of the
United States, September
2002,.http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html.
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