Imperial America and War--a new kind of empire Options
The lowest standards of ethics of which a right-thinking man can
possibly conceive is taught to the common soldier whose trade is to
shoot his fellow men. In youth he may have learned the command, 'Thou
shalt not kill,' but the ruler takes the boy just as he enters
manhood
and teaches him that his highest duty is to shoot a bullet through
his
neighbor's heart -- and this, unmoved by passion or feeling or
hatred,
and without the least regard to right or wrong, but simply because
his
ruler gives the word."
--Clarence Darrow, Resist Not Evil
The existence of an American empire is no secret. The United States
is
said to be at the head of a new kind of empire,
Imperial America and War
by John Bellamy Foster
This is a slightly revised version of the introduction to a
collection
of essays by Harry Magdoff, Imperialism without Colonies (Monthly
Review Press, 2003). Footnotes providing full do***entation are
included in the book.
On November 11, 2000, Richard Haass--a member of the National
Security
Council and special assistant to the president under the elder Bush,
soon to be appointed director of policy planning in the state
department of newly elected President George W. Bush--delivered a
paper
in Atlanta entitled "Imperial America." For the United States to
succeed at its objective of global preeminence, he declared, it would
be necessary for Americans to "re-conceive their role from a
traditional nation-state to an imperial power." Haass eschewed the
term "imperialist" in describing America's role, preferring
"imperial," since the former
connoted "exploitation, normally for commercial ends," and
"territorial control." Nevertheless, the intent was perfectly clear:
To advocate an imperial foreign policy is to call for a foreign
policy
that attempts to organize the world along certain principles
affecting
relations between states and conditions within them. The U.S. role
would resemble 19th century Great Britain....Coercion and the use of
force would normally be a last resort; what was written by John
Gallagher and Ronald Robinson about Britain a century and a half ago,
that "The British policy followed the principle of extending control
informally if possible and formally if necessary," could be applied
to
the American role at the start of the new century (Richard N. Haass,
www.brook.edu).
The existence of an American empire is no secret. It is widely, even
universally, recognized in most parts of the world, though
traditionally denied by the powers that be in the United States. What
Haass was calling for, however, was a much more open acknowledgement
of this imperial role by Wa****ngton, in full view of the American
population and the world, in order to further Wa****ngton's imperial
ambitions. "The fundamental question that continues to confront
American foreign policy," he explained, "is what to do with a surplus
of power and the many and considerable advantages this surplus
confers
on the United States." This surplus of power could only be put to use
by recognizing that the United States had imperial interests on the
scale of Britain in the nineteenth century. The world should
therefore
be given notice that Wa****ngton is prepared to "extend its control,"
informally if possible and formally if not, to secure what it
considers to be its legitimate interests across the face of the
globe.
The final section of Haass' paper carried the heading "Imperialism
Begins at Home." It concluded: "the greater risk facing the United
States at this juncture...is that it will squander the op****tunity to
bring about a world sup****tive of its core interests by doing too
little. Imperial understretch, not overstretch, appears the greater
danger of the two."
There is every reason to believe that the "Imperial America" argument
espoused by Haass represents in broad outline the now dominant view
of
the U.S. ruling class, together with the U.S. state that primarily
serves that class. After many years of denying the existence of U.S.
empire, received opinion in the United States has now adopted a
position that glories in the "American imperium," with its "imperial
military," and "imperial protectorates." This ****ft in external
posture first occurred at the end of the 1990s, when it became
apparent that not only was the United States the sole remaining
superpower following the demise of the Soviet Union, but also that
Europe and Japan, due to slowdowns in their rates of economic growth
relative to that of the United States, were now less able to rival it
economically. Nor did Europe seem to be able to act militarily
without
the United States even within its own region, in relation to the
debacle of the Yugoslavian civil wars.
After Wa****ngton launched its global War on Terrorism, following
September 11, 2001, the imperial dimensions of U.S. foreign policy
were increasingly obvious. U.S. empire is therefore now ****trayed by
political pundits and the mainstream media as a necessary "burden"
falling on the United States as a result of its unparalleled role on
the world stage. The United States is said to be at the head of a new
kind of empire, divorced from national interest, economic
exploitation, racism, or colonialism, and that exists only to promote
freedom and human rights. As Michael Ignatieff, Professor of Human
Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University,
proclaimed in the New York Times Magazine (January 5, 2003),
"America's empire is not like empires of times past, built on
colonies, conquest and the white man's burden....The 21st century
imperium is a new invention in the annals of political science, an
empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free markets,
human rights and democracy, enforced by the most awesome military
power the world has ever known."
Such high-sounding words aside, what makes this "21st century
imperium" an overriding concern for humanity today is Wa****ngton's
increased readiness to use its unrivaled military power to invade and
occupy other countries whenever it deems this absolutely necessary to
achieve its ends. Yet, as Indian economist Prabhat Patnaik observed
more than a decade ago, "No Marxist ever derived the existence of
imperialism from the fact of wars; on the contrary the existence of
wars was explained in terms of imperialism." Once the reality of
imperialism has been brought back to the forefront of world attention
as a result of such wars it is im****tant to search out its underlying
causes.
Classic Imperialism
One of the most influential mainstream historical accounts of British
imperialism in the nineteenth century was presented in an article
entitled "The Imperialism of Free Trade," written a half-century ago
by economic historians John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson. A part of
this analysis was utilized by Haass to advance his "Imperial America"
argument. The central thesis of Gallagher and Robinson's article was
simple: imperialism is a continuous reality of economic expansion in
modern times. Those who associated imperialism primarily with
colonies
and colonialism, and who therefore took the scramble for Africa and
late nineteenth century colonial expansion as the basis for a general
model of imperialism, were wrong. British imperialism throughout the
nineteenth century remained essentially the same in its inner logic
despite the concentration on expanding free trade in one period and
on
annexing colonies in another. As Gallagher and Robinson elaborated
(in
the same passage from which Haass quoted):
British policy followed the principle of extending control informally
if possible and formally if necessary. To label the one method 'anti-
imperialist' and the other 'imperialist,' is to ignore the fact that
whatever the method British interests were steadily safeguarded and
extended. The usual summing up of the policy of the free trade empire
as 'trade not rule' should read 'trade with informal control if
possible; trade with rule when necessary.'...Despite...attempts at
'imperialism on the cheap,' the foreign challenge to British
paramountcy in tropical Africa [in the late nineteenth century] and
the comparative absence there of large-scale, strong, indigenous
political organizations which had served informal expansion so well
elsewhere, eventually dictated the switch to formal rule.
For those seeking to comprehend British imperialism in the nineteenth
century, this argument suggested, it is the "imperialism of free
trade" and not colonialism that should be the primary focus. Only
when
the economic ends of Britain could not be secured by informal control
did it resort to formal imperialism or colonization--that is, direct
and continuing use of military and political control--to achieve its
ends. If it has often been said that "trade followed the flag," it
would be far more correct to say that there was "a general tendency
for British trade to follow the invisible flag of informal empire."
The "distinctive feature" of the "British imperialism of free trade
in
the nineteenth century," these authors argued, was that its use of
its
military force and hegemonic power in general were primarily limited
to establi****ng secure conditions for economic dominance and
expansion.
The clearest example of such informal imperialism was the British
role
in South America in the nineteenth century. Britain maintained its
control in the region through various commercial treaties and
financial relation****ps backed by British sea power. As British
Foreign Minister George Canning put it in 1824: "Spanish America is
free; and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly she is English."
At
all times, Gallagher and Robinson state, British influence was
exercised so as to convert such "areas into complementary satellite
economies, which would provide raw materials and food for Great
Britain, and provide widening markets for its manufactures." When
left
with no other way of enforcing its dominance, Britain was always
ready
to resort to active interventions--as it did repeatedly in Latin
America in the nineteenth century.
As the distinguished German historian Wolfgang J. Mommsen noted in
his
Theories of Imperialism, the significance of this concept of informal
imperialism was that it tended to bridge the gap between non-Marxist
and Marxist approaches, since it stressed the historical continuity
of
imperialism as a manifestation of economic expansion (not confusing
it
simply with its more formal political-military occurrences):
By recognizing that there are numerous informal types of imperialist
domination which precede or accompany the establishment of formal
rule, or even make it unnecessary, Western [non-Marxist] thinking on
the subject of imperialism has drawn closer to Marxist
theory....Generally speaking, most non-Marxist theoreticians admit
nowadays that dependency of an imperialist sort may well result from
the most varied kinds of informal influence, especially of an
economic
nature. Imperialist forces at the colonial periphery were by no means
obliged constantly to resort to the actual use of political power: it
was generally quite enough to know that the imperialist groups could
count on sup****t from the metropolitan power in the event of a
crisis.
Formal political rule thus appears only as the most specific, but not
the normal type of imperialist dependence.
Ironically, Gallagher and Robinson distinguished their approach from
the classic accounts of John Hobson (in his 1902 Imperialism: A
Study)
and Lenin (in his 1916 Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism)
by associating both Hobson's and Lenin's views with a narrower
spectrum of cases involving formal control or colonialism. By
identifying the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when colonial
annexations were at their height, as a qualitatively new stage of
capitalism--the monopoly or imperialist stage--Lenin in particular,
these authors argued, had come to associate imperialism with formal
rather than informal control.
However, this criticism fell wide of the mark, since Lenin himself
had
emphasized that imperialism did not necessarily involve formal
control, as witnessed especially by British imperialism in Latin
America in the nineteenth century. "The division of the world
into...colony-owning countries on the one hand and colonies on the
other," he observed, did not exhaust the core-periphery relations
between nation states. Indeed Lenin pointed to "a variety of forms of
dependent countries; countries, which, officially, are politically
independent, but which are, in fact, enmeshed in the net of financial
and diplomatic dependence...the semi-colony," including cases like
Argentina, which was so dependent financially on London that it was a
virtual colony.
The reality of an informal imperialism of free trade (or imperialism
without colonies) was never an enigma to Marxist theory, which viewed
imperialism as a historical process associated with capitalist
expansion--only secondarily affected by the particular political
forms
in which it manifested itself. The reason for characterizing the last
quarter of the nineteenth century as the imperialist stage in the
work
of Lenin and most subsequent Marxist theorists, did not have to do
mainly with a ****ft from informal to formal imperialism, or the mere
fact of widespread annexations within the periphery, but rather with
the evolution of capitalism itself, which had developed into its
monopoly stage, creating a qualitatively new type of imperialism. It
was this historically specific analysis of imperialism as a
manifestation of capitalist development in all of its complexity
(economic/political/military--core and periphery) that was to give
the
Marxist theory of imperialism its im****tance as a coherent way of
understanding the deeper globalizing tendencies of the system.
In this interpretation, there was a sense in which imperialism was
inherent in capitalism from the beginning. Many of the features of
contem****ary imperialism, such as the development of the world
market,
the division between core and periphery, the competitive hunt for
colonies or semi-colonies, the extraction of surplus, the securing of
raw materials to bring back to the mother country, etc. are part of
capitalism as a global system from the late fifteenth century on.
Imperialism, in the widest sense, had its sources in the ac***ulation
dynamic of the system (as basic as the pursuit of profits itself),
which encouraged the countries at the center of the capitalist world
economy, and particularly the wealthy interests within these
countries, to feather their own nests by appropriating surplus and
vital resources from the periphery--what Pierre JalE9e called The
Pillage of the Third World. By a variety of coercive means, the
poorer
satellite economies were so structured--beginning in the age of
conquest in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries--that their
systems of production and distribution served not so much their own
needs as those of the dominant metropoles. Nevertheless, the
recognition of such commonalities in imperialism in the various
phases
of capitalist development was entirely consistent with the
observation
that there had been a qualitative change in the nature and
significance of imperialism that commenced in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, sufficient to cause Lenin to associate this with
a
new stage of capitalism.
Marxists have therefore often distinguished between an older
imperialism and what was called the "new imperialism" that began in
the final decades of the nineteenth century. What distinguished this
new imperialism were primarily two things: (1) the breakdown of
British hegemony and increased competition for control over global
territories between the various advanced capitalist states; and (2)
the rise of monopolistic cor****ations--large, integrated industrial
and
financial firms--as the dominant economic actors in all of the
advanced
capitalist states. The new mammoth cor****ations by their very nature
sought to expand beyond national bounds and dominate global
production
and consumption. As Harry Magdoff observed, "The urge to dominate is
integral to business." Monopolistic firms engaged in this imperial
struggle were frequently favored by their own nation states. The
Marxist theory of the new imperialism, with its focus on the rise of
the giant firms, thus pointed to the changed global economic
cir***stances that were to emerge along with what later came to be
known as multinational or global cor****ations. All of this became the
context in which older phenomena, such as the extraction of surplus,
the race for control of raw materials and resources, the creation of
economic dependencies in the global periphery and the unending
contest
among rival capitalist powers, manifested themselves in new and
transformed ways.
It was this understanding of imperialism as a historical reality of
capitalist development, one that took on new characteristics as the
system itself evolved, that most sharply separated the Marxist
approach from mainstream interpretations. The latter frequently saw
imperialism as a mere policy and associated it primarily with
political and military actions on the part of states. In the more
widely disseminated mainstream view (from which realist economic
historians like Gallagher and Robinson dissented), imperialism was
present only in overt instances of political and territorial control
ushered in by actual military conquest. In the contrasting Marxist
view, imperialism occurred not simply through the policies of states
but also through the actions of cor****ations and the mechanisms of
trade, finance and investment. It involved a whole constellation of
class relations, including the nurturing of local collaborators or
comprador elements in the dependent societies. Any explanation of how
modern imperialism worked thus necessitated a description of the
entire system of monopoly capitalism. Informal control of countries
on
the periphery of the capitalist world system by countries at the
center of the system was as im****tant, in this view, as formal
control. Struggles over hegemony and more generally rivalries among
the leading capitalist states were continuous, but took on changing
forms depending on the economic, political and military resources at
their disposal.
Imperial America in the Post-Cold War World
If the main distingui****ng feature of modern imperialism, in the
Marxist view, was associated with the rise to dominance of the giant
cor****ations, the ordering of power within the system, as reflected
in
the relative position of various nation states, nonetheless ****fted
considerably over time. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century the principal global reality was the decline in British
hegemony and the increased rivalry among the advanced capitalist
states that followed, leading to the First and Second World Wars. The
rise of the Soviet Union in the context of the First World War posed
an external challenge to the system eventually leading to a Cold War
struggle between the United States, the new hegemonic power of the
capitalist world economy following the Second World War, and the
Soviet Union. The fall of the latter in 1991 left the United States
as
the sole superpower. By the end of the 1990s the United States had
gained on its main economic rivals as well. The result of all of this
by the beginning of the new century, as Henry Kissinger declared in
2001 in Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, was that the United
States had achieved "a pre-eminence not enjoyed by even the greatest
empires of the past."
This naturally led to the question: what was the United States to do
with its enormous "surplus of power"? Wa****ngton's answer,
particularly after 9/11, has been to pursue its imperial ambitions
through renewed interventions in the global periphery--on a scale not
seen since the Vietnam War. In the waging of its imperial War on
Terrorism the U.S. state is at one with the expansionary goals of
U.S.
business. As Business Week Online, in late January 2003, expressed
the
economic benefits to be derived from a U.S. invasion of Iraq: "Since
the U.S. military would control Iraq's oil and gas deposits [the
second largest known reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia] for
some time, U.S. companies could be in line for a lucrative slice of
the business. They may snag drilling rights too." Companies in the
oil
service industry, which is dominated by the United States, might
"feel
just as victorious as the U.S. Special Forces." Indeed, the main
object of such military invasions is regime change and the subsequent
restructuring of the economy of the "rogue state"--so-called because
it
stands outside the imperial order defined primarily by the United
States--to make it conform to the dominant requirements of the
capitalist world economy, which include opening up its resources to
more extensive exploitation.
Richard Haass (whose responsibilities in the present administration
were extended to include those of U.S. coordinator of policy for the
future of Afghanistan) pointed out in his book Intervention, that
regime change often can only be accomplished through a full-scale
military invasion leaving the conquered nation in ruins and
necessitating subsequent "nation-building":
It is difficult to target specific individuals with military
force....U.S. efforts to use force to bring about changes in
political
leader****p failed in the cases of Qaddafi in Libya, Saddam in Iraq,
and Aideed in Somalia. Force can create a context in which political
change is more likely, but without extraordinary intelligence and
more
than a little good fortune, force by itself is unlikely to bring
about
specific political changes. The only way to increase the likelihood
of
such change is through highly intrusive forms of intervention, such
as
nation-building, which involves first eliminating all opposition and
then engaging in an occupation that allows for substantial
engineering
of another society.
Such a "nation-building" occupation, Haass stressed, involves
"defeating and disarming any local opposition and establi****ng a
political authority that enjoys a monopoly or near-monopoly of
control
over the legitimate use of force." (This is Max Weber's well-known
definition of a state--though imposed in this case by an invading
force.) It therefore requires, as Haass observed quoting one foreign
policy analyst, an occupation of "imperial pro****tions and possibly
of
endless duration."
It is precisely this kind of invasion of "imperial pro****tions" and
uncertain duration that now seems to be the main agenda of
Wa****ngton's War on Terrorism. In the occupation and "nation-
building"
processes following invasions (as in the case of Afghanistan),
explicit colonialism, in the most brazen nineteenth century sense,
will be avoided. No formal annexation will take place, and at least a
pretense of local rule will be established from the beginning, even
during direct military occupation. Nevertheless, a central goal will
be to achieve some of what colonialism in its classic form previously
accomplished. As Magdoff pointed out,
Colonialism, considered as the direct application of military and
political force, was essential to reshape the social and economic
institutions of many of the dependent countries to the needs of the
metropolitan centers. Once this reshaping had been accomplished
economic forces--the international price, marketing and financial
systems--were by themselves sufficient to perpetuate and indeed
intensify the relation****p of dominance and exploitation between
mother country and colony. In these cir***stances, the colony could
be
granted formal political independence without changing anything
essential, and without interfering too seriously with the interests
which had originally led to the conquest of the colony.
Something of this sort is occurring in Afghanistan and is now being
envisioned for Iraq. Once a country has been completely disarmed and
reshaped to fit the needs of the countries at the center of the
capitalist world, "nation-building" will be complete and the
occupation will presumably come to an end. But in areas that contain
vital resources like oil (or that are deemed to be of strategic
significance in gaining access to such resources), a ****ft back from
formal to informal imperialism after an invasion may be slow to take
place--or will occur only in very limited ways. "Informal control" or
the mechanism of global ac***ulation that systematically favors the
core nations, constitutes the normal means through which imperialist
exploitation of the periphery operates. But this requires, on
occasion, extraordinary means in order to bring recalcitrant state
back into conformity with the market and with the international
hierarchy of power with the United States at its apex.
At present, U.S. imperialism appears particularly blatant because it
is linked directly with war in this way, and points to an endless
series of wars in the future to achieve essentially the same ends.
However, if we wish to understand the underlying forces at work, we
should not let this heightened militarism and aggression distract us
from the inner logic of imperialism, most evident in the rising gap
in
income and wealth between rich and poor countries, and in the net
transfers of economic surplus from periphery to center that make this
possible. The growing polarization of wealth and poverty between
nations (a polarization that exists within nations as well) is the
system's crowning achievement on the world stage. It is also what is
ultimately at issue in the struggle against modern imperialism. As
Magdoff argues in Imperialism without Colonies, there is an essential
oneness to economic, political, and military domination under
capitalism. Those seeking to oppose the manifestations of imperialism
must recognize that it is impossible to challenge any one of these
effectively without calling into question all the others--and hence
the
entire system.
All material (c) copyright 2003 Monthly Review
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