Samir Amin: "Not a Happy Ending"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Conclusion to "Not A Happy Ending" by Samir Amin, published in Al-Ahram.
Full article online at:
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/1999/462/samir.htm

US HEGEMONY ATTACKS --THE 21ST CENTURY WILL NOT BE AMERICAN:
In this chaotic conjuncture, the US took the offensive once more to
reestablish its global hegemony and to organise the world system in its
economic, political and military dimensions according to this hegemony. Has
US hegemony entered its decline? Or has it begun a renewal that would make
the 21st century "America's"?

If we examine the economic dimension in the narrow sense of the term,
measured roughly in terms of per capita GDP, and the structural tendencies
of the balance of trade, we will conclude that American hegemony, so
crushing in 1945, receded as early as the 1960s and '70s with Europe and
Japan's brilliant resurgence. The Europeans bring it up continuously, in
familiar terms: the European Union is the first economic and commercial
force on a world scale, etc. The statement is hasty, however, for, if it is
true that a single European market does exist, and even that a single
currency is emerging, the same cannot be said of "a" European economy (at
least, not yet). There is no such thing as a "European productive system";
such a productive system, on the contrary, can be spoken of in the case of
the United States. The economies set up in Europe through the constitution
of historical bourgeoisie in the relevant states, and the shaping, within
this framework, of autocentric national productive systems (even if these
are also open, even aggressively so), have stayed more or less the same.
There are no European TNCs: only British, German, or French TNCs. Capital
interpenetration is no denser in inter-European relations that in the
bilateral relations between each European nation and the US or Japan. If
Europe's productive systems have been eroded, therefore, weakened by
"globalised interdependence" to such an extent that national policies lose
a good deal of their efficiency, this is precisely to the advantage of
globalisation and the forces that dominate it, not to that of "European
integration", which does not exist as yet.

The US's hegemony rests on a second pillar, however: that of military
power. Built up systematically since 1945, it covers the whole of the
planet, which is parcelled out into regions, each under the relevant US
military command. This hegemonism had been forced to accept the peaceful
coexistence imposed by Soviet military might. Now that the page is turned,
the US went on the offensive to reinforce its global domination, which
Henry Kissinger summed up in a memorably arrogant phrase: "Globalisation is
only another word for US domination." This American global strategy has
five aims: 1) to neutralise and subjugate the other partners in the Triad
(Europe and Japan), while minimising their ability to act outside the US's
orbit; 2) to establish military control over NATO while
"Latin-Americanising" the fragments of the former Soviet world; 3) to exert
uncontested influence in the Middle East, especially over its petroleum
resources; 4) to dismantle China, ensure the subordination of the other
great nations (India, Brazil), and prevent the constitution of regional
blocs potentially capable of negotiating the terms of globalisation; 5) to
marginalise the regions of the South that represent no strategic interest.

The favoured instrument of this hegemony is therefore military, as the US's
highest-ranking representatives never tire of repeating ad nauseam. This
hegemony, which guarantees in turn that of the Triad over the world system,
therefore demands that America's allies accept to navigate in its wake.
Great Britain, Germany and Japan make no bones (not even cultural ones)
about this imperative. But this means that the speeches with which European
politicians water their audiences --regarding Europe's economic power
--have no real significance. By placing itself exclusively on the terrain
of mercantile squabbles, Europe, which has no political or social project
of its own, has lost before the race has even started. Washington knows
this well.

The principal means in the service of the strategy chosen by Washington is
NATO, which explains why it has survived the collapse of the adversary that
constituted the organisation's raison d'ètre. NATO still speaks today in
the name of the "international community", thereby expressing its contempt
for the democratic principle that governs this said community through the
UN. Yet NATO acts only to serve Washington's aims --no more and no less
--as the history of the past decade, from the Gulf War to Kosovo, goes to
show.

The strategy employed by the Triad under US direction takes as its aim the
construction of a unipolar world organised along two complementary
principles: the unilateral dictatorship of dominant TNC capital, and the
unfurling of a US military empire, to which all nations must be compelled
to submit. No other project may be tolerated within this perspective, not
even the European project of subaltern NATO allies, and especially not a
project entailing some degree of autonomy, like China's, which must be
broken by force, if necessary.

This vision of a unipolar world is being increasingly opposed by that of a
multipolar globalisation, the only strategy that would allow the different
regions of the world to achieve acceptable social development, and would
thereby foster social democratisation and the reduction of motives for
conflict. The hegemonistic strategy of the US and its NATO allies is today
the main enemy of social progress, democracy and peace.

The 21st century will not be "America's century". It will be one of vast
conflicts, and the rise of social struggles that question the
disproportionate ambition of Washington and of capital.

The crisis is exacerbating contradictions within the blocs of dominant
classes. These conflicts must take on increasingly acute international
dimensions, and therefore pit states and groups of states against each
other. One can already discern the first hints of a conflict between the
US, Japan, and their faithful Australian ally, on one hand, and China and
the other Asian countries, on the other. Nor is it difficult to envisage
the rebirth of a conflict between the US and Russia, if the latter manages
to extricate itself from the spiral Boris Yeltsin has dragged it into. And
if the European Left could free itself from its submission to the double
dictate of capital and Washington, it would be possible to imagine that the
new European strategy would be articulated on those of Russia, China, India
and the Third World in general, in the perspective of a necessary
multipolar construction effort. If this does not come about, the European
project itself will fade away.

The central question, therefore, is how conflicts and social struggles (it
is important to differentiate between the two) will be articulated. Which
will triumph? Will social struggles be subordinated, enframed by conflicts
and therefore mastered by the dominant powers, even instrumentalised to the
benefit of these powers? Or will social struggles, on the contrary, conquer
their autonomy and force the major powers to conform to their exigencies?

Of course, I do not imagine that the conflicts and struggles of the 21st
century will produce a remake of the 20th century. History does not repeat
itself according to a cyclical model. Today's societies are confronted by
new challenges on all levels. But precisely because the immanent
contradictions of capitalism are sharper at the end of the century than
they were at its beginning, and because the means of destruction are also
far greater than they were, the alternatives, for the 21st century more
than ever before, are "socialism or barbarism".


Louis Proyect

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