Capitalist firms that are in the same industry _commercially_ compete with one another for the same customers. And the dominant ideology of the capitalist mode of production is indeed competition rather than cooperation. But that doesn't mean that the European power elites and Japanese power elite are competing with the US power elite for _political_ hegemony. After World War II, the former "spontaneously" -- some immediately, others gradually -- consented to the latter's hegemony. In the case of Japan, its post-war Constitution is the seal of that surrender.
The Chinese and Russian power elites, in contrast, have yet to do exactly the same, for they are still not regarded by the American power elite as their allies. So, the Chinese and Russian power elites cooperate with the American power elite if and when they think doing so coincides with their perceived national interests and yet, at the same time, are building regional politico-military networks (such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and transnational commercial linkages in competition with the American power elite.
> In the case of the U.S. invasion of the Middle East, though the U.S. was
> able to bully other imperial power centers into (mostly reluctant)
> acquiescence, its more fundamental failure to achieve real unity is
> pretty obvious. Were it a single empire, for example, the Middle East
> would not so handicap the u.s. in its policing of its core imperial
> domain of Latin America.
>
> We may be closer to a needed theory with the publication in November of
> Robert Albritton, Robert Jessop and Richard Westra (eds), POLITICAL
> ECONOMY AND GLOBAL CAPITALISM. The symposium in Historical Materialism
> on Harvey (which also includes discussion of Wood) is valuable too,
> though it is Wood herself who at the end of her books suggests that our
> theorization of imperialism remains unsatisfactory -- radically
> incomplete.
>
> The U.S. needs its own troops in the Middle East just _because_ we have
> no single "multinational empire" but rather competing centers of
> Imperial power, of which the U.S. is now dominant. But such dominance is
> by no means the same as would be the leadership of a multinational
> empire.
Japan and Europe have few trained and motivated combat troops, for their ruling classes have entrusted defense of capitalism at the global level to US troops and their local collaborators in the global South, rather than their own nations' _deliberately underdeveloped_ armed forces. That's another piece of evidence that Japan and Europe are part of the multinational empire under US leadership, rather than being independent imperialist powers.
> For us in the U.S., however, U.S. imperialism remains _The_ enemy, and
> we should not count (as Dennis R seems to count) on any powers _within_
> the capitalist world as representing a more civilized capitalism. Rosa
> Luxemburg's label (barbarism) applies equally to Europe, the U.S.,
> Japan, Russia, and China. Temporary differences in military or economic
> might are just that, differences in might, not in humanity or
> inhumanity. France, after all, was the primary villain in the Rwanda
> genocide, Germany in the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Nevertheless, if Japan and/or Europe had governments that were essentially capitalist (albeit more civilized than the American brand of it) and yet _unlike now_ consciously built new military alliances (away from NATO), financial networks (away from the dollar), cultural connections (away from the American media), and so on (say, linking Europe and Russia closer to each other, for their economies really need each other) specifically to _contest US hegemony_, that would be very useful for many peoples in the Third World, though not as useful as the old Soviet Union, in checking the US power elite's design. If Europe and Japan had Middle East policy _independent_ of America's, even if their new policy were exactly like China's and for the sole purpose of helping their nations' capitalists have more and better investment opportunities in oil and gas, that would be still a great boon to the Iranians. The Middle East is unlike Rwanda and Yugoslavia -- it is far more crucial to capitalism as it is (until it transitions to a new energy regime), and US Middle East policy is not only not in the interest of working classes but not in the interest of many Japanese and European capitalists.
If capitalism in itself really drove power elites, not just capitalists in the same industry, to compete with one another internationally, a new policy outlined above might have already emerged, _but it has not_. Nothing is automatic. Objective conditions are eroding US hegemony, but subjective responses are lagging behind, with Europe and Japan still solidly incorporated into the US-led multinational empire. What can be done to push them to take political steps to get them out of it? -- Yoshie