Re: [A-List] US: Bush says be ready for war

["Sherry & Stan Goff" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

Henry C.K. Liu said:

> To fight the enemy, you have to first find him.  Pearl Harbor was
> simple. Germany, an ally if Japan, declared war on the US. The War on
> Terrorism apears to be showdow boxing witha lot of collateral damage,
> not just in dark corners of the world, but in the US home land.
>
> The events of 9:11 reversed the US from the path of anti-statism,
> anti-government set by Reagan, back
> to the path of rising statism and giant government.  In foreign policy,
> national security becomes a
> justification for effectuating regime changes in "evil" nations accused
> of harboring ofr supporting
> terrorism. Economically, the financial market has shown itself to be
> indifferent to national security
> needs. This has brought about government restriction of the free flow of
> funds so fundamental to
> neo-liberalism merely to stop terrorism financing.  Military
> Keynesianism is now in full swing. The War
> on Terrorism has put the US in a garrison state mentality which
> ironically is the aim of terrorism.  Thus
> the War on Terrorism is proof of the success of terrorism.

Stan replies:

Henry's points are very important.

I've been reading "The New Imperialism", by Robert Biel, and frankly Biel
makes some very compelling points.  He glosses over the strategic
devaluation and petrodollar aspects of the 1970's, which has been paid much
attention here in the past on this list, but he clearly identifies a
crisis-driven adjustment by capital at that time, emphasizing instead the
capitlaist-cooperative [and political] aspects of neoliberalism, that is,
the multi-lateral integration of the Northern metropoles to more effectively
salvage accumulation at the expense of the Southern periphery.  Part of that
process of adjustment was the overthrow of Keynesianism and the
implementation of "structural adjustment" using debt leverage as the crow
bar to tear open the sovereignty of peripheral nations.  He also writes in
2000, when the book was published, that the "system" was showing signs of
severe strain.

I myself have used the term, military keynesianism, but I will qualify that
by saying that keynesianism was earlier characterized by policies that
attempted to secure full employment in the core.  It looks more to me like
the Bush-Rumsfeld junta is blundering its way toward some kind of return to
mercantilism, though I'd heavily qualify that, too, and a kind of archaic
return to the foreign policies of the Cold War, with "terrorism" the new
enemy.  It's obviously a response to yet another crisis of accumulation,
this time compounded by a political crisis, that is, the beginning of the
unravelling of the empire (especially in Latin America) with the ultimate
goal being the establishment of control of the world's energy resources as
the strategic linchpin.  Biel points out that there was an inherent danger
in offering portions of the northern working class a "white privilege" as a
way of maintaining domestic tranquility in the metropoles, which was that,
paradoxically, the inequality of remuneration for labor might strengthen the
hand of peripheral nations (as we have seen to some extent in China, which
can no longer be called truly "peripheral").  To rationalize the system,
then, the core must eventually attack the living standards of its own
workers, not just to expand capital against the falling rate of profit, but
to maintain political hegemony.

Seems to me that we have some studying to do to figure out what this
qualitatively different approach is all about, beyond the outlines of it,
concretely.  Much has been said about currency on this list, and that's one
aspect of it.  And much has been alluded to with regard to the resurgence of
inter-imperialist rivalry, as a reaction to the "unilateralism" of the US
[mercantilism?].  I am seriously missing the voice of Mark Jones lately (are
you okay, Mark?), who occasionally and brilliantly took a crack at some kind
of integrative totalization.

Henry is dead right about one thing, and that's that war on "terrorism" is a
military blunder from A to Z.  We all realize that it's a pretext to give
the junta a free hand, but it really appears that they believe they can
indefinitely support a hi-tech, highly mobile, highly flexible military
regime... one reason, I suspect, that the Joint Chiefs are at loggerheads
with Rumsfeld... they know he is a crackpot technophilic generalissimo who
doesn't know shit from shinola about the principles of war.  Reading between
the lines, it's fairly apparent that Afghanistan is an unmitigated military
disaster, and an expensive one at that.  Mobility and flexibility are
essential to "warfighting" in the tactical realm, and a high tech bag of
tricks can deliver significant tactical advantages.  But tactics that do not
take a larger strategic overview as their referent are bees in bottles.
Past military doctrine was predicated on conflict between nation-states, and
this provided focus; strategic, operational, and tactical.  The new doctrine
that is emerging, "full-spectrum response", provides military-police
structures with a much longer menu of tactical options, but it can't
overcome the fundamental strategic contradictions that continually return to
initiative to the regimes opponents, and that continually generate more
antipathy for the regime and sympathy for its enemies.  Of course, we know
that the enemy is not "terrorism".  We are seeing the inauguration of a a
pure, unadulterated [literal] class war, and that's why the weakened and
marginalized states across which the exploited masses grow restless are no
longer at the center of military doctrine.