AUT: Fw: Arrighi on Balkan war 2/2

[pmargin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Steve Wright)]

> Anglo-American misreading of the situation, far from adding new
> momentum to an imaginary great leap forward in US global power, may
> precipitate a complete breakdown of what is left of the US world
> order.
>
>
> US Global Power in World Historical Perspective
>
> This assessment is based on two studies that have sought clues to an
> understanding of present tendencies in earlier periods of capitalist
> history that in key respects resemble the present. The first study
> (Giovanni Arrighi, Il lungo XX secolo. Denaro, potere e le origini
> del nostro tempo, Il Saggiatore, Milano, 1996; edizione EST, 1999)
> focuses on the financial expansions that have characterized the
> closing phases of each and every stage of development of world
> capitalism from early modern times to the present. The second study
> (Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver et al, Chaos and Governance in
> the Modern World System, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
> and London, 1999) focuses instead on the analogies and differences
> between the present hegemonic transition (to a yet unknown
> destination) with two earlier transitions of world capitalism: from
> Dutch to British hegemony in the eighteenth century and from British
> to US hegemony in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.
> Taken jointly, these two studies provide the following insights into
> the present dynamic of US global power.
>
> First, to different degrees and in different ways, the U-shaped
> trajectory that has characterized US global power over the last
> thirty years has been typical also of the power of all previous
> leaders of world-scale processes of capital accumulation in the
> closing phases of their hegemony. In the past, as in the present, the
> recovery of the fortunes of the declining hegemonic state after an
> initial crisis was based on a capacity to turn to its own advantage
> the intense interstate competition for mobile capital that ensued
> from all major expansions of world trade and production. This
> capacity was and is based on the fact that the declining hegemonic
> state still occupies the center of the world economic system.
> Although its capacity to compete in the commodity markets is
> declining, its capacity to act as the central clearing house of the
> international financial system is greater than that of any other
> center, including the centers that are emerging as the most
> competitive in the commodity markets.
>
> Second, in past hegemonic transitions, though not yet in the present,
> the resurgence of the power of the declining hegemonic state was the
> prelude to increasing world disorder and the eventual breakdown of
> the old hegemonic order. Three tendencies seem to have been
> particularly important in provoking this increasing disorder. One was
> the emergence of new military powers that the declining hegemonic
> state was incapable of keeping under control. Another was the
> emergence of states and social groups who demanded a share of the
> system's resources that surpassed what could be accommodated under
> the existing hegemonic order. And yet another was the tendency of the
> declining hegemonic state to use its residual (and resurgent) power
> to transform its hegemony (based on some measure of consent) into an
> exploitative domination (based primarily on coercion).
>
> Third, in the present transition, in comparison with previous ones,
> there is virtually no sign of any power emerging that can even
> remotely challenge militarily the declining hegemonic state. Instead
> of observing the emergence of new military challengers, we have
> observed the collapse of the only credible challenger--the USSR. But
> if there are no signs of the emergence of new powers capable of
> challenging the United States militarily, there is plenty of evidence
> that the other two tendencies are stronger than they were in past
> transitions. Thus, the decline of US global power in the 1970's was
> due primarily to US difficulties in accommodating Third World demands
> for a greater share of the world's resources. And the subsequent
> resurgence of US global power was due primarily to the success of the
> Reagan global counterrevolution, not just in containing, but in
> rolling back those demands. The essence of this counterrevolution was
> precisely the transformation of US hegemony into an increasingly
> exploitative domination. US hegemony in the 1950's and 1960's rested
> not just on coercion but also on the consent elicited from Third
> World countries through the promise of a global New Deal, that is,
> wealth for all nations through "development." In the 1980's and
> 1990's, in contrast, Third and former Second World countries were
> asked rather unceremoniously to subordinate "development" to the
> imperatives of world financial markets that relentlessly
> redistributed wealth to the United States and other wealthy countries.
>
> In spite of its apparent success, this transformation can be expected
> to be as unstable as analogous transformations have been in the past.
> Two contradictions seem particularly difficult to resolve. One is the
> continuing shift of the epicenter of global processes of capital
> accumulation to East Asia. Contrary to widespread opinion, the
> persistence of the economic crisis in Japan after the crash of
> 1990-92 and its transformation into a region-wide (East Asian) crisis
> in 1997- 98 in themselves do not support the contention that the
> shift has been reversed. As my co-authors and I show in Chaos and
> Governance in the Modern World System, in past transitions newly
> emerging centers of world-scale processes of capital accumulation
> became the epicenters of turbulence rather than expansion, before
> they acquired the capabilities to lead the world toward a new order.
> This was true of London and England in the late eighteenth century
> and even more of New York and the United States in the 1930's. To say
> that the Japanese and East Asian financial crises of the 1990's
> demonstrate that the epicenter of global processes of capital
> accumulation has not been shifting from the United States to East
> Asia, makes as little sense as saying that the Wall Street crash of
> 1929-31 and subsequent US economic crisis demonstrated that the
> epicenter of global processes of capital accumulation had not been
> shifting from the United Kingdom to the United States.
>
> Moreover, the Japanese and East Asian crises have so far been
> associated with continuing economic expansion in greater China (that
> is, in the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and
> Singapore). Given the demographic size and historical centrality of
> China in the region, this continuing expansion is far more
> significant for the East Asian economic renaissance than the
> slowdowns and contractions experienced elsewhere in the region. To be
> sure, in spite of its great advances, China is still a low-income
> country. Nor is there any guarantee that China's economic expansion
> will not itself be punctuated by crises. Indeed, the chances are that
> it will because, as just noted, crises are an integral aspect of
> emerging economic centers. Nevertheless, the fact that China with its
> huge population has managed to escape the financial strangulation
> that brought the Second and Third Worlds to their knees is in itself
> an achievement of historic proportions. If the inevitable future
> crises will be managed with a minimum of political intelligence,
> there is no reason why they cannot be turned into moments of
> emancipation from US domination, not just for China, but for East
> Asia and the world at large.
>
> But whether they will or not, the continuing shift of the epicenter
> of world-scale processes of capital accumulation to East Asia
> undermines the capacity of the United States to hold the center of
> the global economy. Already in the 1990's, the good performance of
> the US economy and the underlying speculative boom on Wall Street
> have been thoroughly dependent on East Asian money and cheap
> commodities. While the money, in the form of investments and lending,
> has enabled the US economy to keep expanding in spite of a large and
> growing trade deficit, the cheap commodities have contributed to
> keeping inflationary pressures down in spite of economic expansion.
> It is not clear for how long a situation like this can be sustained,
> or how it can be remedied by the United States without bringing its
> own economic expansion to an end. What is clear is that, the longer
> it lasts, the more the present economic dependence of East Asia on
> the United States will be turned upside down.
>
> The second contradiction of the resurgence of US power in the 1990's
> concerns its growing dependence on military means, not just
> politically, but economically as well. The US military-industrial
> complex has always been a major (if not the major) source of US
> leadership and eventual undisputed supremacy in high-technology
> production and activities--from small arms production in the
> nineteenth century that gave rise to the American system of mass
> production, to the space program launched in response to the Soviet
> Sputnik that gave rise to today's satellite-linked and computerized
> communication systems. This undisputed supremacy is today the one and
> only decisive advantage of US industry in global markets. More
> important, the interpenetration of US high-technology and US military
> production and activities has provided the US government with a
> powerful instrument with which to bend the rules of an allegedly
> "free" global market in favor of US business. The more competition at
> home and abroad has intensified, the more essential this not so
> invisible instrument of commercial advantage and self- protection has
> become.
>
> But while the importance of the US military-industrial complex as an
> instrument of advancement of US economic interests has increased, its
> usefulness on strictly military grounds has fallen off dramatically
> with the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. As
> previously noted, the main usefulness of the US military-industrial
> complex lay in its capacity to reproduce a balance of terror with the
> USSR at ever more costly and risky levels. But as the US experience
> in Vietnam showed, and that of the USSR in Afghanistan confirmed,
> these high-tech military-industrial apparatuses were rather
> ineffectual instruments with which to police the world on the ground.
> Policing the world on the ground, required risking one's own
> citizens' lives in activities that made little sense to the citizens
> themselves. As a result, as soon as the escalation of the Cold War in
> the 1980's overshot its mark and brought about the collapse of the
> USSR, the high-tech, highly capital intensive US military apparatus
> lost most of its military value. With the loss of the one and only
> credible military rival, the US military-industrial complex lost its
> own credibility as a war-making apparatus.
>
> This contradiction between the increasing importance of the US
> military-industrial complex as the primary source of US economic
> advantage on the one side, and its decreasing value on strictly
> military grounds on the other, has never been resolved. The latent,
> increasingly important economic function of the US
> military-industrial complex cannot be openly admitted without
> undermining completely the credibility of its ostensible function.
> Worse still, such an open admission would also disclose the fact that
> the US military-industrial complex has probably become the most
> important instrument for bending and breaking the rules of "free
> markets" that the US is so fervently preaching to the world.
> Therefore a strictly military function for the US military-industrial
> complex has to be found.
>
> This has been the main purpose of the half a dozen hot "wars"--in
> fact, more military exercises than wars proper--fought by the United
> States since the end of the Cold War. In some instances, especially
> in the Gulf War and to a lesser extent in the Balkan War, these
> military exercises were also useful as highly publicized shows of US
> high-tech merchandise. But the overriding objective has been to find
> an alternative to the credible military function that the US
> military-industrial complex had lost with the collapse of the USSR.
> How successful has this series of wars been in attaining this
> objective?
>
> It seems to me that they have not been very successful. What they
> have demonstrated above all is what everybody knew from the start:
> that the United States has the technological capabilities to bomb out
> of existence any country it chooses too. Indeed, if it chooses to, it
> has the technological means it needs to blow up the entire world. But
> in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo, they have demonstrated also
> that the new ostensible function of US wars--the pursuit of carefully
> selected and highly discriminatory humanitarian objectives--is not
> worth a single American life. When all is said and done, it would
> seem that the Vietnam syndrome is well and alive, leaving the US
> military-industrial complex without a credible function.
>
> In conclusion, the foundations of the present resurgence of US global
> power are not as solid as they seem. Attempts to use that power to
> consolidate the exploitative domination of a handful of wealthy
> countries over the rest of the world are the surest recipe for global
> disaster. Hopefully, the ruling groups of these wealthy countries
> will be wise enough to use their still considerable power to solve
> rather than aggravate the problems that plague the world.
> Unfortunately, as Abba Eban once said, "History teaches us that men
> and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other
> alternatives."
>




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