From God invented war to teach Americans geography by Peter J. Taylor : Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the penultimate capitalist restructuring to Empire, is globalized concomitant with the disintegration of the European empires. The final death knell for the US imperialist tendency comes with defeat in Vietnam where the US had taken over France's imperialist legacy. Thus by the time we come to the Gulf war in 1991, the US is leading a global coalition in a conflict of Empire. In these new times, US military power is not an instrument of conquest, it is a guarantor of a new world order, just as the first President Bush told us at the time. With Empire there are no outside enemies, all wars are civil wars, and the USA is perennially "invited" to sort them out. Thus, the USA is privileged in Empire as provider of origins, precursor conditions, and protection. An impressive list but it does not, according to H/N, make Empire American.2. Fortress America in a realist geopolitical world
There are many parallels between the H/N interpretation of "American history in the world" and the traditional exceptionalism that emanates from the US right-wing nationalist position. In the latter, the Founding Fathers set up a new and unique state based upon principles - rights, freedom, justice - that fought for recognition on the world stage through the twentieth century to become the basis for a US-led political order by the end of the century. At this time, with the political triumph came an imposition of a new economic order - the neo-liberalism of the "Washington consensus - creating a new global governance. But in this interpretation the USA is not the most powerful country for nothing; globalization is most certainly American. In other words the "new world order" proclaimed by the first Bush president is profoundly different from Empire: in these arguments similar histories are producing quite different outcomes.
The basic difference is, of course, the status of the state in the contemporary world. Rather than succumbing to networks of transnational processes, traditional political positions do not accept the idea that states and their authority are declining in importance. In realist international relations states remain the building blocks of an international politics in which coercive power (war and threat of war) remains the key to understanding. Thus security is the most important state policy in a dangerous world in which state interests inevitably clash so that conflict is endemic. Security policy can only be war and preparation for war. Boundaries remain important since they define security shells of friends and foes and therefore define the geography of war and peace. In this argument, whatever the technological advances that have enabled the networks of H/N to blossom, they shrink into insignificance when compared to military technological advances that started with the atomic bomb providing the potential to wipe out all life on Earth. This security imperative has been given a tremendous boost by the events of 9/11: the neo-liberal Washington consensus has been replaced by a neo-conservative Pentagon non-consensus for ordering the world.
From this perspective there has been no transition to Empire and the distinction between imperialist and imperial behaviours is nonsensical; both Teddy Roosevelt and George Bush (either one) were acting in the best interests of their country when projecting USA military power. For H/N the establishment of the UN and its practices, for all their failures, represents a route to Empire: an inter-state institution with important trans-state potentials. But from a realist position the UN is an ephemeral organization to be used when useful but ignored when it gets in the way of national interest. For instance, the identification of the (first) Gulf war as a post-imperialist US venture because it was carried out under UN auspices with a large number of allies can be interpreted in a quite conventional way. A comparison between America"s east Asian wars (Korea and Vietnam) and her west Asian wars (Gulf I and Gulf II) is salutary here. In east Asia the first war involved a broad coalition under UN auspices but, a little more than a decade later, the second one did not have UN backing but the US went ahead regardless. Simply replace "east" by "west" and the sentence remains factually correct. This hardly suggests a recent sea-change in international relations. In other words each of these four wars represented challenges to US interests and America responded, taking the UN on board if possible but without this being a necessary priority.
The USA as lone superpower in the realist interpretation creates a quite basic geopolitics post 9/11. Although perpetrated by an infamous network, the US has accentuated its "rogue states" offensive policy and "star wars" defensive policy. Thus foreign states as threats remains the basis of the former with 11 in the "firing line" Afghanistan and Iraq done, Iran, Syria and North Korea under orders, and Burma, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Cuba, and Venezuela firmly in US military sights.
The common denominator of rogue states is that they be small and poor; it is not in US interests to directly confront France, Germany, Russia and China. On the defensive side, a state territorial fortress is being consolidated in Pentagon planning for the development of "super weapons" that will allow rapid response with massive firepower from within US borders to anywhere in the world. This is a 25-year programme: clearly the most powerful state in the world does not believe in an erosion of the importance of its political boundaries in the medium future
There are many parallels between the H/N interpretation of "American history in the world" and the traditional exceptionalism that emanates from the US right-wing nationalist position. In the latter, the Founding Fathers set up a new and unique state based upon principles - rights, freedom, justice - that fought for recognition on the world stage through the twentieth century to become the basis for a US-led political order by the end of the century. At this time, with the political triumph came an imposition of a new economic order - the neo-liberalism of the "Washington consensus - creating a new global governance. But in this interpretation the USA is not the most powerful country for nothing; globalization is most certainly American. In other words the "new world order" proclaimed by the first Bush president is profoundly different from Empire: in these arguments similar histories are producing quite different outcomes.
The basic difference is, of course, the status of the state in the contemporary world. Rather than succumbing to networks of transnational processes, traditional political positions do not accept the idea that states and their authority are declining in importance. In realist international relations states remain the building blocks of an international politics in which coercive power (war and threat of war) remains the key to understanding. Thus security is the most important state policy in a dangerous world in which state interests inevitably clash so that conflict is endemic. Security policy can only be war and preparation for war. Boundaries remain important since they define security shells of friends and foes and therefore define the geography of war and peace. In this argument, whatever the technological advances that have enabled the networks of H/N to blossom, they shrink into insignificance when compared to military technological advances that started with the atomic bomb providing the potential to wipe out all life on Earth. This security imperative has been given a tremendous boost by the events of 9/11: the neo-liberal Washington consensus has been replaced by a neo-conservative Pentagon non-consensus for ordering the world.
From this perspective there has been no transition to Empire and the distinction between imperialist and imperial behaviours is nonsensical; both Teddy Roosevelt and George Bush (either one) were acting in the best interests of their country when projecting USA military power. For H/N the establishment of the UN and its practices, for all their failures, represents a route to Empire: an inter-state institution with important trans-state potentials. But from a realist position the UN is an ephemeral organization to be used when useful but ignored when it gets in the way of national interest. For instance, the identification of the (first) Gulf war as a post-imperialist US venture because it was carried out under UN auspices with a large number of allies can be interpreted in a quite conventional way. A comparison between America"s east Asian wars (Korea and Vietnam) and her west Asian wars (Gulf I and Gulf II) is salutary here. In east Asia the first war involved a broad coalition under UN auspices but, a little more than a decade later, the second one did not have UN backing but the US went ahead regardless. Simply replace "east" by "west" and the sentence remains factually correct. This hardly suggests a recent sea-change in international relations. In other words each of these four wars represented challenges to US interests and America responded, taking the UN on board if possible but without this being a necessary priority.
The USA as lone superpower in the realist interpretation creates a quite basic geopolitics post 9/11. Although perpetrated by an infamous network, the US has accentuated its "rogue states" offensive policy and "star wars" defensive policy. Thus foreign states as threats remains the basis of the former with 11 in the "firing line" Afghanistan and Iraq done, Iran, Syria and North Korea under orders, and Burma, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Cuba, and Venezuela firmly in US military sights.
The common denominator of rogue states is that they be small and poor; it is not in US interests to directly confront France, Germany, Russia and China. On the defensive side, a state territorial fortress is being consolidated in Pentagon planning for the development of "super weapons" that will allow rapid response with massive firepower from within US borders to anywhere in the world. This is a 25-year programme: clearly the most powerful state in the world does not believe in an erosion of the importance of its political boundaries in the medium future
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