Re: Wood article in ATC

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Charles Brown wrote:
> This is a particularly strange time to emphasize this thesis that capitalist
> imperialism relies on economic and not military force, when capitalist
> imperialism is obviously relying on military force in Iraq and Afghanistan.

She actually starts off her article with an explanation, feeble as it is:

BEFORE THE LATEST war in Iraq, anyone who accused the United States of 
imperialism was likely to meet the objection that the U.S. doesn't 
occupy any colonial territories anywhere in the world.  Now that it is 
very visibly in occupation of Iraq, everything seems to have changed 
overnight.

(clip)

But I'm not at all sure about that.  I certainly don't want to deny that 
Bush and Co.  have taken things to insane extremes, which are likely to 
be self-defeating, especially since Bush is undermining one of U.S. 
imperialism's strengths, the hold it has over its allies.

The right-wing extremists of the Bush regime are certainly deploying 
U.S. military power in new and excessive ways, which are already proving 
to be unsustainable.  But I'm not sure that Bush represents such a big 
break, for two major reasons.

One reason is that I think even Bush, and maybe even the ideologically 
driven right-wing fanatics who surround him, would prefer to stay out of 
colonial entanglements and to return to a non-colonial imperialism.  I 
say this not because I think these guys have a spark of decency or some 
residual commitment to democracy—the very idea is ludicrous.


****

In fact, if there is anything that is obvious it is exactly that the 
Bush administration and all its ideologues (Niall Ferguson) are modeling 
themselves on the British Empire.

For more on this, I'd recommend the article "Imperial America and War" 
by John Bellamy Foster in a recent MR:

On November 11, 2000, Richard Haass—a member of the National Security 
Council and special assistant to the president under the elder Bush, 
soon to be appointed director of policy planning in the state department 
of newly elected President George W. Bush—delivered a paper in Atlanta 
entitled “Imperial America.” For the United States to succeed at its 
objective of global preeminence, he declared, it would be necessary for 
Americans to “re-conceive their role from a traditional nation-state to 
an imperial power.” Haass eschewed the term “imperialist” in describing 
America’s role, preferring “imperial,” since the former connoted 
“exploitation, normally for commercial ends,” and “territorial control.” 
Nevertheless, the intent was perfectly clear:

"To advocate an imperial foreign policy is to call for a foreign policy 
that attempts to organize the world along certain principles affecting 
relations between states and conditions within them. The U.S. role would 
resemble 19th century Great Britain....Coercion and the use of force 
would normally be a last resort; what was written by John Gallagher and 
Ronald Robinson about Britain a century and a half ago, that 'The 
British policy followed the principle of extending control informally if 
possible and formally if necessary,' could be applied to the American 
role at the start of the new century." (Richard N. Haass, www.brook.edu)

full: http://www.monthlyreview.org/0503jbf.htm

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