On Sat, 19 Oct 2002 10:17:37 -0500 Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes:
>
>
> Michael Pollak wrote:
> >
> > {CLIP] And three, this makes it sound like
> > aggressive war wasn't his raison d'etre -- that he could take it
> or leave
> > it. . . .
>
> Is the Iraq War 'just' an expression of motives more or less
> specific to
> the Bush Administration and the interests of the particular factions
> of
> capital it represents -- _or_ are its aggressive actions
> (Afghanistan
> and those to come) more deeply grounded in the dynamic of u.s.
> imperialism? (The verbosity of the question is a reflection of my
> not
> knowing exactly what it is I want to ask.) More crudely: Is the U.S.
> _forced_ to become more openly aggressive in the world. Someone said
> of
> Napoleon, "He has to be always doing something." (Not accurate --
> quoted
> from memory.) Is this now true of the U.S. position in the world?
Well, I do think that the US in fact is being forced to become more aggressive in the world. The end of the cold war, left the US in the position of being the world's only superpower and hence, the supreme guardian of global capitalism. However, that does not mean that the US will forever be in that position. The EU has up to now accepted being militarily and politically subordinate to the US, but they are slowly but surely seeking to pull themselves out of this subordinate status, which was largely a consequence of WW II, which devastated Europe, and then the Cold War, which required that the capitalist powers maintain a united front against the Soviet bloc. But those conditions no longer obtain. Already, by the 1970s both Germany and Japan were beginning to challenge the economic supremacy of the US (while still accepting its military and political hegemony). Right now both Japan and Germany are in economic trouble but what that means is that if US supremacy is to be effectively challenged it must be by means of larger units such as the European Union rather than by individual countries.
I would contend that the United States' role in the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia must be understood in those terms. The main force driving the US into committing its forces into Yugoslavia was the need to preserve its superordinate status within NATO.
In the Middle East and the Muslim world generally, there existed an alliance between the US and Islamicist forces during the Cold War, which has since broken down (hence the attacks of 9-11-01). The stability of the main oil producer, SaudI Arabia has been called into question, hence the increased aggressivity of the US in regards to the Middle East.
At the same time, while the US is being constained to take a more agressive posture within the world, it is nevertheless the case that disagreements have broken out within the governing elites, over how this is to be done. Clearly, many Establishment types like Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Eagleburger disapprove of the Bush Administration's approach to Iraq for instance. It is not that these folk are against a more aggressive posture, but they recognize that the Bush approach is a high risk one, that may well disrupt theclient-state system that has evolved over the last several decades. Many of the Bushies, on the other hand seem to have few qualms about such an outcome, since they seem to believe that the US has the strength and resources to remold the Middle East into a form more suitable to the US. For Kissinger, Scowcroft and company, this apparently seems to be sheer hubris, that will ultimately end in tears.
>
> (These questions presuppose that imperialism is the mode of
> existence of
> modern capital, not a choice or a policy. They ask whether that mode
> of
> existence has become more constrained in its policies.)
Well, imperialism is (as Lenin saw over a century ago) the mode of existence for modern capital. However, that does not mean that there is unanimity within the ruling class over how the empire is to be best managed.
Jim F.
>
> Carrol
>
>
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