Well you can be sure that the US government has people 'strategizing' on this all the time. This is what I've been repeatedly saying about US trade policy. The talk is 'liberalization' and 'free trade' but most all the moves made are to the advantage of US-based capital. I say this as still yet another private equity group from the US (Cerberus--you are at the gates of bankruptcy HELL!) is poised to take complete control of still yet another giant Japanese bank (Aozora, the former Japan Credit Bank).
I'm fully aware of the strategy vs. E. Asia. having lived here for the past 12 years.
Carrol, I think it was, just said 'capital' isn't monolithic, but if you look at what is happening with the fusion of private equity interests and US 'public' and international policy, it's starting to look that way.
Carlyle Group, which I've written about on this list is a pretty good example of this: a complete fusion of elite US interests with what the US government does worldwide. If the Europeans are trying to do the same thing, they are doing a very unconvincing job of it so far.This goes way beyond defense contracting, though it's no coincidence that what you need to maintain an industrial sector for a huge military largely overlaps with life in a developed country (electronics, aerospace, social control agencies, distribution systems).
If you want to understand what is going on, though, you have to get below the level of abstraction that a thesis like Negri's uses in order to deal with globalization as it actually is. This frightens a lot of people on this list apparently. It's so much easier to fight globalization as an abstraction rather than the reality.
Globalization is, for the US interests, a way of dealing with those double deficits while asserting ever more control of the world--in ways that go way beyond the right to drop bombs on whoever's infrastructure they want.
When the US empire becomes a small group of humongous, unregulated, offshore holding companies owning, controlling, buying and selling the companies at the top of all key sectors worldwide, then you'll see what I mean. They are well on their way there.
Charles Jannuzi