Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> [This is interesting. In battle of Empire vs. America Firsters in
> understanding the international order, a lot turns on how much
> freedom the U.S. has to act alone in Iraq, and how much the global
> bourgeoisie in Davos can exercise their influence.
Not necessarily. If, as I suspect, the calendar has returned to 1890, what we see is not a battle between the "global bourgeoisie" and the U.S. but the preliminary rounds of a new competition among imperialist powers. Who is on whose side has nto been determined yet, and what we see in the article you send shows preliminary jockeying.
However one interprets the Bush Administration motives, one objective fact of a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq would be that the U.S. controlled the energy supplies upon which Japan and Europe depend. In other words what we see at Davos is not the first manifestations of "super-imperialism" but the preliminary moves towards a new division of the world among competing imperialist powers.
Eventually the European Union will have to confront U.S. power just as Germany in the late 19th century had eventually to confront British power.
Carrol