Carrol: > > ALL the first and second line capitalist states* have been very happy to leave that task to the United States. (*The EU and Japan; Russia and China; Brazil and India.).... Afghanistan's geopolitical importance to world capital is obvious, hence the satisfaction, it seems to me, with which China and Russia approve of coalition activities there.
Michael: I don't quite see this -- either the geopolitical importance, or the satisfaction. I'm open to persuasion, though, and if Carrol or anyone else would like to make this case in more detail I would be very grateful.
It was filler for a blank space in my understanding of what's going on: my way of simply raising a question by giving _some_ answer to the question. The rubbish-answer defines what an actual answer has to look like.
The U.S. is _acting_ like a World Cop, and other capitalist nations (core and would-be core) are (and have been) going along. The U.S. military adventures in Iraq & Afghanistan (the latter with considerable NATO participation) have pretty much stretched U.S. military capacity, and, moreover, while some sectors of u.s. capital are profiting (some on the borders of legality even in capitalist terms), U.S. capital as a whole is not. So what essentially _is_ going on. (I reject out of hand blaming it on a few personalities - Bush, Cheney, et al).
Still pretty crude, but I really think analyses grounded in The Decline of the U.S. are wholly wrong, but I also see U.S. power as meetinglimits.
Carrol