>One of the great achievements of the globalisation protest movements, in
>other words, has been to put an end to thinking of politics as a contest
>among nations or blocs of nations. Internationalism has been reinvented as
>a politics of global network connections with a global vision of possible
>futures. In this context, anti-Europeanism and anti-Americanism no longer
>make sense.
True. And one of the ways internationalism has been created is to have US speakers at anti-war rallies elsewhere in the world. They in turn have taken the trouble to come.
Hardt's position is consistent with the broad outline of "Empire" which I take to be opposition by the multitude to the new imperial structures in the spirit of the Wobblies rather than that of the Third International.
But while the boundaries of the "right of intervention" are being thrashed out over Iraq, the inter-imperialist rivalries are still important in shaping the future world government. France has just hosted the conference of African nations. On Sunday Gordon Brown is quietly going to present his strategic plan for world development proposing a fund of the order of $500 billion. These positions are implicit challenges to US leadership.
Chris Burford