"In these respects we are still in the early stages of imperialist reconstruction."
Micah replied:
"What will it mean to be further along the process though? The only thing that I can think of is when the U.S. military can be constantly sent in to subdue and pacify hostile populations. . . . Furthermore I have trouble imagining the U.S. getting involved in such a war unless it was forced. If the ruling class is not willing to do it in regards to Iraq -which is lead by a leader that has been portrayed as the living manifestation of the devil- then who will they be willing to do it to unless really threatened?"
Ken responds:
As long as a relatively high degree of prosperity prevails in and for the industrial metropole, imperialist collaboration of the Trilateralist/Bilderburg sort tends to work, comparable to the fin de siècle Berlin conference. But when the going gets rough, the gloves come off, as World War I showed soon afterward. As Noam Chomsky has often noted, for example, Japan today is really the main U.S. enemy in Asia. Conquering and plundering small and weak countries of the Third World (today's version of grabbing Panama, Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, Cuba, and Puerto Rico) is emphatically NOT the long term purpose of current attempts to rebuild the U.S. war machine.
In those respects, we are immeasurably more disadvantaged politically than our Marxist (and even populist) forebears were during the dawn of modern imperialism. In the 1890s, the North American working class was anti- imperialist. Today, the working class as a whole supports Clinton's war against Iraq.
Ken Lawrence