US imperial decline?

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[was: Re: [PEN-L:17028] the attack]

I wrote:
> The US industrial economy may be in decline, but its military and
> financial might are undimmed. The US/NATO as a whole is still pretty
> strong. The transnationals are running  the world economy. Etc.

Michael Keaney writes:
> I think the revisionist "official" explanation for the Asian crisis, whose
> revisionism preceded this particular episode, is, nevertheless,
> all of a piece with the tangible increase in US efforts to exert control
> over wayward, actually and potentially, allies and other less committed
> types....

Why is trying to "exert control over wayward, actually and potentially,
allies and other less committed types" a symptom of US imperial decline?
All empires always try to control as much as possible. If Finland were to
be brought into the NATO fold, that would be a symptom of US imperial _rise_.

> The invocation of Article 5 of the NATO charter is part of this process.
> It's totally unprecedented alright, since, by the logic of that
> organisation, it has been ignored on at least two occasions involving
> "foreign-inspired" attacks on NATO members. ... But it's not just that
> NATO should jump only when the US is in trouble. In truth NATO's role has
> been evolving very quickly in recent years, since, probably, around 1995
> when clear distinctions were being made by Clinton's national security
> apparatus between NATO and the UN,...  culminating in Lord (good grief)
> Robertson's strained efforts in July of this year to rationalise the
> projection of NATO power all the way into Kazakhstan and beyond.

that seems a symptom of US imperial rise, since it's cementing NATO under
US "leadership," while expanding NATO's role. The toadying of British
leaders to the power of the US also seems a symptom of this rise.

> ... It's also a very important reminder that it's not the *Bush
> administration* that is being punished here, but a United States foreign
> policy that has strong continuities going all the way back to Reagan, at
> the very least, and probably much further than that (it's not actually so
> important a debating point right now).

I don't see the relevance of this point.

> Meanwhile US financial might is under increasing pressure thanks to the
> instability it creates in the global economy. Successive IMF bail-outs
> have led some to bemoan the problem of "moral hazard" (master of tact Paul
> O'Neill), but that is a mask for the mounting costs of such operations.

But most -- or even all -- of the "mounting costs" are shouldered by the
victims of the IMF programs. The rentiers haven't suffered (not due to the
IMF).

> Similarly, the huff and puff about James Wolfensohn is a smokescreen
> covering the real issue of the diminishing returns of the World Bank's
> operations (from the point of view of capital) and impatience with the
> legitimising role that the WB plays in the service of the system now
> preparing to junk it.

I'm not convinced. The WB is simply going through another restructuring, in
line with new demands put on it. It could easily work out as it did with
the Reagan-era restructuring, when laissez faire became the WB Party Line.

> The demands being placed upon the US economy by its  military and national
> security state continue to increase, and yet we are now, all of us, fully
> aware of the economic house of cards upon which expectations of endless
> surplus and stratospheric growth were based.

Right now, military Keynesianism could prop up the US economy. It may sap
the US industrial strength in the long run, but then the US elite can get
others to pay the cost.

> The transnationals do not yet run the world economy, meanwhile. Their
> agents in the state are as subject to the famous "agency problem" as any,
> given the state's evolving quasi-autonomy and its duty to legislate for
> capital as a whole.

Yeah, there's an agency problem (i.e., the state's leadership can benefit
from "relative autonomy"). But that doesn't mean that we don't see the
state's leadership almost always responding to the power of money (campaign
contributions, etc.) I don't think the state ever served "capital as a
whole," since the interests of that entity are unclear beyond the basics
(protecting their property), due to uncertainty about the future. In the
meantime, the state responds to the competing interests of "many capitals"
(big business vs. small business, steel vs. auto, Democrats vs.
Republicans, etc.) and to pressure from the outside (the labor "movement,"
the National Rifle Association, the Brady Bunch, etc.)

BTW, I said that the TNCs ran the economy, not the state.

> I subscribe to the imperial state thesis put forward by the likes of Leo
> Panitch and James Petras in this instance, plus acknowledge the continuing
> importance of inter-state rivalry, as evidenced only recently by the
> rather bizarre efforts of Britain's MI5 to carve out a new consultancy
> role for itself in the ultimate "public private partnership" of the Blair
> era so far.

I'm not familiar enough with their thesis to comment. But I agree that
competition between states and within states helps prevent the rule by
"capital as a whole."

> I'm not a determinist, and agree that no historical process is
> irreversible *in principle*. But I think that the current micro-process
> (if it may be called that) is so far advanced that whatever has been set
> in train is past the point of no return. Meanwhile, the very same "logic"
> that is governing the current "response" is a microcosm of a more general
> rationale that has committed an ever-increasing proportion of resources to
> the construction, maintenance, augmentation and protection of US hegemony.

that seems a symptom of increased US power.

> In these circumstances it might be useful to dig out Norman Angell's "The
> Great Illusion", published in 1910, and wholly pessimistic as regards the
> returns on imperialist investments, given the associated costs of
> acquisition, subjugation, governance and protection. The Cold War actually
> kept the US within a reasonably manageable set of boundaries. Now it is
> committed to being global supercop, a role that was way too expensive
> anyway, prior to Tuesday's events. ...

I can see that US hegemony has its costs, but that suggests that -- as
usual -- imperial rule is not some permanent structure but rather a dynamic
process involving stresses and strains, continuity and change.

BTW, it's important to distinguish between imperialism (the now world-wide
system of capitalist socio-economic domination and exploitation) from the
US role in that system (as hegemon).

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine