Back to main newsPolitical Report - US IMPERIALISM
Sat 30 Jan 2010
Author: John FosterCopenhagen also brings us to the issue of US strategy and the US ruling class. The presence of Obama at Copenhagen represented an advance. Bush would not have attended. But Obama had to operate on terms set by a big business dominated Congress: a minimal cut of emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020 – not a 30/40 per cent cut from 1990 Kyoto agreement levels. It was this minimal US offer that constituted the failed accord.
So what should the Left make of Obama in the context of US as an imperial power?
It is important to start with a dose of realism. It was foolish of anyone to expect that Obama could be a ‘left-wing president’. It is equally foolish now to denounce him for not being this. CPUSA Chair Sam Webb puts the situation very well in his draft report to his party’s National Convention. Obama is partly responsive to a black, Hispanic and labour constituency. But he was elected as a Democratic Party nominee and remains dependent on a big business-dominated Congress. The Senate particularly remains controlled by the right wing, both republican and democrat. US big business wants to see the November elections further restricting his freedom of movement, especially on health care and fiscal stimulus. The Left sees its task as mobilising on the ground: using the economic crisis to increase the pressure on Congress ahead of the election. But it has to do so in face of a fierce head wind of media-orchestrated right wing populism.
What then is the current strategic thinking within the US as an imperial power – and how does it reflect the interests of the high command of US finance capital ?
The past year has seen a major shift in style and to some extent in substance. The doctrine of US unilateral action has been put to one side. As previously under President Clinton, the corner stone of the US approach is now what Andrew Murray has called the hegemonic alliance – multinational initiatives which still seek to use the US’s wider economic primacy to bind partners. But the character of these hegemonic alliances has changed. The key focus is now China and this focus has changed the content of US alliance strategy as well.
• The key objective is to lock China into a bilateral alliance with the US that will protect US interests economically and strategically. Controlling China is now seen as central to US interests.
• But the US now recognises that this cannot simply be achieved by the US alone. The key lever is to combine the economic and military weight of the US and the EU through a strengthening of a reconfigured NATO. UK itself is far more marginal than it was under Bush except as a US instrument inside the EU. An expanded NATO, militarily congruent with the EU, remains central to US strategy
• The resulting ‘web of alliances’, as Brzezinski calls it, is also intended to control Russia and stabilise actual and potential challenges in eastern Europe, the Middle East and central Asia.
This shift reflects a new realism about the constraints on US imperial interests, the vulnerability of the US revealed by the financial crisis and the repeated failure of its military interventions to secure their objectives.
This new realism is today reflected in some of the documents produced by the policy bodies of US finance capital. The American Enterprise Institute, which funded the Project for a New American century, now stresses the central importance of a constructive engagement with China: emerging as what it describes as ‘the world’s second largest economy’. China must become ‘part of the world’s most important bilateral relationship’. There is an almost admiring discussion of the effectiveness of China’s centrally planned economic policies.
The more mainstream Council on Foreign Relations, highly influential with the State Department, has recently published a paper describing the success of the socialist Najibullah government in Afghanistan after1989. It is now reckoned that this government would have survived long term had Russian aid not been cut off in 1991. US strategists in Afghanistan are called on to learn the lessons of its policies: building alliances in the countryside, maintaining a stable urban economy, winning the country’s youth with education and establishing relations with Moslem religious leaders.
The US objective in Afghanistan, as elsewhere, is to be able to move to a soft imperialism based on alliances – but it is imperialism nonetheless aimed at securing the economic interests of the great US monopolies.
This is why Copenhagen did represent a turning point. China did not do what was required. It aligned itself with Brazil, South Africa, India and Venezuela. It indicated it was not willing to be subject to a US hegemonic alliance that will maintain status quo. Worse still, it created a hegemonic alliance of its own.
Copenhagen also underlined the difficulties in carrying forward Clintonite policy of hegemonic alliance in new circumstances. These circumstances also change the content of the alliances. Previously a key part of this content was conditionality: the demand from allies of an acceptance of neo-liberal market system. Where states refused such terms, then allies were expected to give them only a ‘conditional sovereignty’ that could be removed as required. Regime change was implicit.
In the new world the US is no longer in any position to demand that China accepts neo-liberal market structures and this has implications elsewhere. It represents a major shift.
The next big test will be the Nuclear Non-Non Proliferation Treaty conference in May. Obama is pledged to seek reductions. He has made some important changes in Europe with the withdrawal of the missile system from Poland and the Czech Republic. It will be vital that we do all we can in Britain to create an environment in which a positive contribution can be made – above all by winning commitments for the halting the renewal of Trident. We should note that the British decision date on Trident appears to have been put back till after the General Election and will now take place in July.
In terms of immediate policy, the next focus for the Obama administration will be the middle east and Palestine. Here there are sharp differences within US ruling class. The Republican Right, Perle and Cheney, and sections of the Democratic Party, see an uncritical defence of Israel as cornerstone of US policy before virtually anything else. They back the current Israeli policy of destroying viability of a Palestinian state. Any other aspects of policy are subordinate to that. Others around Brzezinski and the Council on Foreign Policy see Israel’s aggressive stance as an obstacle to wider stabilisation. They want pressure exercised to force Israeli compliance with a US-determined restructuring of the Middle East. But, especially under Hilary Clinton at the State Department, little or no pressure in this direction seems to have been exerted. Current Israeli challenges to human rights, and the brutal treatment of the population of Gaza, appear to be accepted. Hence the importance of stepping pressure on the British government and on the EU for a change of policy.
On economy there are also sharp differences within the US policy establishment. The Right wants a hard-line crackdown on federal spending. It poses the dangers of dollar collapse and inflation. More mainstream strategists see dollar depreciation as a weapon to bring China into line and to reflate US economy.
However, we should not ignore one key area of agreement. This is on the redevelopment of US’s productive economy. There is a consensus that unless steps are taken now, the US will lose its long-term technological primacy over the next generation. While US companies still dominate IT, aerospace, bio-technology, pharmaceuticals and energy, shifts in world investment, the movement of US capital elsewhere and the new technical challenge of China and India mean this is time-limited. A key cause is seen to be the unregulated character of US banking and the massive swing of US assets into finance. The high command of US finance capital can themselves see the long-term dangers and the dangers this poses to US banking primacy.
It is this that has made it possible for Obama to tax banks in a way not done in Britain and to funnel state assistance directly to the industrial sector. The objective is shift US investment back to the US and to transform its profitability - at the same time as consolidating market control elsewhere. This is the background to support for what might be described as a second generation Keynesianism, based on state intervention to switch profit income away from finance, as argued by Hyman Minsky and now advocated by Krugman, Stiglitz and even to an extent Larry Summers. But it should be noted that, as implemented, this will be under the aegis of investment banks and the private equity companies themselves. It will mark a further stage in the development of state monopoly capitalism and the interlocking of finance capital and the capitalist state. It will also be productive of strong inter-imperialist contradictions, particularly with EU countries.
This brings us back to Britain where there is no such consensus in favour of the productive economy and no action has been taken to curb speculation – even though the City of London is at its heart.
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