American Scream
Talk of American empire has once again taken centre stage in world politics.
Codified in the White House strategy of preventive war, imperial policies are now openly discussed in American neo-conservative circles. As Alan Murray in The Wall Street Journal recently put it, "We are all, it seems, imperialists now". Rightly, most people find this language morally abhorrent, and many nations feel threatened by this new militarism.
But when empire was brought out of the closet it wasn't a sign of US strength. Rather, it was reaction to declining American hegemony, rooted in the structural faults of the world economy.
This erosion of power has taken place in an imperceptible manner, like some sort of continental drift, thus hiding its effects from view. It goes beyond the administration changes in Washington, and therefore will be with us long after George W. Bush has gone. It has nothing to do with dictators or democracy. In essence, it refers to the consequences of reproducing our present brand of capitalism and the re-emergence of a China-centred East Asian power bloc.
The Iraq war was at one and the same time all about oil and not about oil. The narrow conspiracy thesis claims that the White House has been usurped by an oil mafia. This notion is derived from the personal ties of Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to oil interests, coupled with reports that Cheney's old firm, Halliburton, have been awarded lucrative reconstruction contracts. Undoubtedly these connections have merit, but it doesn't explain why such a risky, ambitious war and now occupation was undertaken.
An alternative theory would draw the connection between Middle East oil supplies and global capitalism. Since 1980 there has been a steady increase in US military interventions in the Middle East, seeking primarily to harness oil as a public good and as a coercive tool of power over Japan and Europe. At the same time, the US has diversified its own supplies, capturing markets in the Americas and Central Asia. But the oil fields of Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia will continue to be the major strategic centres for the next half century. Controlling these territories means effectively controlling the global economy. However, this still doesn't address the larger question: why should the US feel its economic position is under threat? Why the need to force regime changes now? The post-9/11 atmosphere of unilateralism has provided the trigger, but we need to dig deeper to understand how the nature of modern capitalism encourages this imperial ambition.
In our present era the defining paradigm is a particularly aggressive brand of capitalism, built on deregulation, privatisation, and ever-tighter integration. In the past two decades it has been a revolution of the new right, yet it presents itself as progressive, integrating regression into an abstract model of rational progress.
When faced with problems it seeks temporary fixes, exporting crises to others in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The difference now is the damage this revolution is doing in the West: sluggish economic growth rates, destructive competition, and chronic excess capacity are its fundamental characteristics. It strikes at the heart of elite networks, generating unstable financial flows and more frequent banking and currency crises. This type of capitalism has returned to haunt its homeland.
Fully resolving this crisis in Western centres would involve either a strict social austerity programme similar to an IMF prescription, or a form of New Deal welfarism to absorb surplus capital. But neither of these options would be tolerated by political elites. Instead, new temporary fixes must be found to deal with the over-accumulation - be it money, Mercedes or mangoes.
If new spaces are not found, prices fall and profits collapse. How does the US open new spaces? By using its overwhelming military force, a dimension of power where is has no rivals.
This, it has to be said, is not new at all. It is remarkably similar to the logic of British imperialists in the late nineteenth century. As the German-American scholar Hannah Arendt once put it, the British learnt that "the original sin of simple robbery had eventually to be repeated, lest the motor of accumulation suddenly die down".
However, within this unstable system of aggressive capitalism there is an underlying shift in the balance of economic power: the re-emergence of a China-centred East Asia after two centuries of European and North American control.
Paradoxically, such a trajectory is propelled forward by impatient Western capitalists seeking new spaces. East Asia has many advantages of geography and history, but its position as the world's most important capital surplus region - resting on astonishingly high savings rates and frantic buying of foreign currencies - represents a serious threat to the US. What happens when Asian investors pull out of the US and channel their surplus capital into a mature China? What happens when China shifts the terms of world trade in its favour?
Politically, unlike post-war Japan, China will be neither small nor inward-looking. While the Bush doctrine may demand that no nation reach regional hegemonic status, the internal East Asian dynamics at work within aggressive capitalism has made this highly likely. At this point we return to oil again. In part, US elites believe they will be able to restrain China and maintain their privileges by controlling the value and distribution of Gulf oil - the essential resource for economic and military power. As its edge in manufacturing and finance erodes, the US will continue to play the military card. So far it shows no signs of adjusting to alternative modes of capitalism or accommodating the re-emergence of a politically active Middle Kingdom.
This American approach for managing the capitalist order it helped create is undoubtedly fraught with risks and complications. Not only will it increase inequalities and environmental degradation, but it will encourage stronger alliance formations within and between Europe and Asia to block US goals. The neo-conservative movement is resilient and has constructed long-term objectives in the Middle East. It may collapse under the weight of its own hubris, only to be renewed and reproduced. But the mask has been removed: this is imperialism being forged before our very eyes, recreated in another space and time.
13th Nov 2003