Halliday was one of the many NLR-types who became left-Fukuyamaists after the end of the Cold War, but he was less concerned with the 'international community' than with what powerful social forces stood for progress. In this sense, his reading of imperialism as an historically progressive force was always implicit in his appreciation of Bill Warren's work. Were it not for what those of a Deutscherite persuasion regarded as the 'historically progressive' USSR, which US imperialism was in competition with, Halliday might well have been a lifelong liberal imperialist rather than a marxist. Indeed, he has explained his support for Bush /fils/ invading Iraq as being consistent with his support for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - in each case, the opponents of the imperial power were the 'forces of reaction'. Hitchens has used similar language, but in a less interesting and coherent way.
ps: Halliday's support for the first Gulf War may have been published in Marxism Today, but it got a more prominent outing in the New Statesman, where it was debated by former comrades such as Tariq Ali, Robin Blackburn, Alex Cockburn et al. The thrust of his argument there was that Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait had thwarted an incipient democratic movement there, that his defeat would strengthen democratic forces in Iraq, and that as Hussein was never going to negotiate or capitulate short of war, the Left ought to support his opponents. Norman Geras sided with him in that debate, arguing in a piece co-written with Halliday that the Third World did not want 'anti-imperialism' but better interventionism on the part of the US. (A colleague of Geras wrote to him at the time, suggesting that as he had never before shown any interest in the Third World, he could only conclude that his passionate pro-war stance was motivated by his sympathy for Israel. Geras apparently regarded this challenge as antisemitic.)
-- *Richard Seymour*
Writer and blogger
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