The experiences
of the past year confirm that the international system of imperialism is in the
midst of a major realignment which greatly increases the danger of inter-imperialist
war. This realignment is being fueled in general by the uneven development of
capitalism and imperialism, but in particular by the declining economic and
political power of U.S.
imperialism.
With the
collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989, U.S.
imperialism embarked on a campaign to create a unipolar imperialist world under
the hegemony of the United
States. The regime of George Bush Senior
launched the First Gulf War against Iraq
and engineered the Bosnian civil war in order to extend U.S. military power into strategic
areas. Both of these military adventures were conducted with the aim of
controlling the flow of oil to Europe and the Far East.
Success in this regard would have reduced Europe to an American dependency,
while putting the brakes on the rapid economic growth of Japan and China.
The American
strategy was partially successful. It threw the Japanese economy into a
tailspin from which it has not yet recovered. Even the stock market boom of the
1990s failed to raise Japan
out of its economic recession. In Eastern Europe the Americans, with the help
of the Europeans, systematically carved up the old Soviet sphere of influence,
while the U.S. financed a series of “independence” movements in the
Caucasus with the goal of separating Russia from the vast oil fields of the
region.While these moves were
undoubtedly aimed at weakening Russia
and reducing it to an American vassal state, there was also a secondary aim of
tightening the noose around Europe by gaining
control of its last secure source of oil.
The decline of
the American financial markets in 2000, coupled with the longer term decline in
American manufacturing, has resulted in the U.S. amassing huge balance of
payments and balance of trade deficits. This is a very strange position for the
world’s biggest imperialist power to find itself in. Imperial powers are
usually creditor states with huge trade surpluses and the flow of capital
outward in the form of investment capital is far more than offset by the flow
of profits back to the imperial heartland. Instead, the United States has become the
world’s largest debtor state with the world’s largest balance of
trade deficit and the world’s largest net outflow of capital. Alarm at
the resulting rapid decline of the U.S. dollar has led to increasing pressure
to replace the U.S. dollar as the international currency standard with the Euro
or a basket of currencies. All of this is evidence of an imperialist power in
serious decline.
While the
economies of Europe, especially those of Germany and France, have also been
quite sluggish since 2000, the European Union (EU) has steadily increased the
size of its trading bloc with the admission (or pending admission) of several
countries in Eastern Europe, as well as Turkey, making it the biggest trading
bloc in the world, both in terms of population and in terms of economic output.
Meanwhile, the sharp drop in U.S.
and European financial markets in 2000 diverted enormous amounts of capital
into China and, to a lesser
extent, India.
As a result, China
has emerged as an economic powerhouse which, if present trends continue, will
become the world’s most powerful economy within 15 to 20 years. India is also determined to become a big economic
power in Asia.
Some of these
trends were already apparent by the mid-1980s and it was precisely to counter
them that U.S.
imperialism decided to embark on a series of military campaigns aimed at
solidifying its military superiority and achieving absolute control of all of
the world’s main energy supplies. It is now becoming apparent that this
strategy of U.S.
imperialism has been a strategic failure.
On the one hand,
the obvious threat posed to Europe by the U.S. plan forced the German and
French imperialists to put aside two centuries of distrust and antagonism and
form a strategic partnership. The existence of this strategic partnership
became apparent during the months leading up to the February 2003 American-led
invasion of Iraq.
During the remainder of 2003 and 2004 this Franco-German partnership has
remained intact despite repeated efforts by the U.S. to split it. Following the
re-election of George W. Bush in November, French President Jacques Chirac
publicly called for the further economic and military strengthening of the
European Union as a major pole in a multipolar world. While he repeatedly
averred that this was not an anti-American move, the content of what he was
calling for made it abundantly clear that it was. At the very least it was a
repudiation of the Bush Doctrine which envisages a unipolar world dominated by
and dictated to by U.S.
imperialism.
During the past
year or so, various other poles have also begun to emerge in this new world
order. China,
obviously, constitutes one of those poles. With a quarter of the world’s
population, a rapidly growing economy and a formidable military capability, China is already a
major world economic power and it is only a matter of time before it becomes a
full-fledged superpower. China
and Russia
recently announced that they will be holding joint military exercises in the
spring for the first time in half a century. India
is also emerging as an economic power in Asia
with a clear desire to dominate the Indian subcontinent. There are also
indications that China and India may be negotiating an alliance which would
constitute a serious challenge to U.S.
interests in Asia.
Meanwhile, Latin America is also beginning to assert itself. Brazil, in
particular, is attempting to establish a Latin American pole in the emerging
multipolar world in the form of a strengthened Merursor trading bloc. Venezuela and Cuba have also launched an initiative
to create an alternative to the U.S. Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
scheme which they are calling the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas
(BAA). This initiative would see the creation of a Latin American-Caribbean
trading bloc based on principles of equality and mutual benefit.
There was a time
when U.S.
imperialism could have put an end to all of these maneuvers with a few back
room meetings, the exchange of large sums of money and/or the intervention of
the marines. However, those days are long gone. The back room pressure, bribery
and military interventions are still going on, but they no longer achieve the
desired results. Part of this is simply that the U.S. is financially and politically
bankrupt and does not have the same clout that it once had. However, a bigger
part is that the U.S.
is stretched to the breaking point militarily. It has military bases in almost
every country in the world. It now has 150,000 troops occupying Iraq, many of which
are from the reserves. Those troops are being forced to stay in Iraq for
up to three years because there are no reserves left to replace them. The U.S. has even been forced to begin withdrawing
troops from its outposts in other countries to shore up its occupation force in
Iraq.
Despite this, the Iraq
campaign continues to go very badly for the Americans and it is becoming clear
that even with twice the number of troops the U.S. would not be able to defeat the
Iraqi resistance. The bogging down of the U.S.
armed forces in Iraq has
created a situation in which U.S.
imperialism can no longer, at the present time, pose a serious military threat
to any other country. Syria
and Iran, the next countries
on the U.S. list for invasion
and regime change know that they are safe so long as the resistance continues
in Iraq.
Similarly, the U.S. cannot
launch military actions against Cuba,
Venezuela or North Korea so long as it is tied down in Iraq.
The U.S. is
thus faced with a quandary. To defeat the Iraqi resistance, even temporarily,
it would have to commit several hundred thousand more troops to the fight,
troops that it does not have and cannot afford even if it did have them. If it
leaves Iraq without crushing
the resistance it will shatter the myth of American invincibility and encourage
others to also resist U.S.
domination. However, if it stays in Iraq
the U.S.empire could rapidly crumble due to encroachment by
imperialist rivals and a resurgence of national liberation struggles.
Regardless of how it eventually decides to solve this problem, the U.S. risks
ending up like Russia, with grand imperialist ambitions but little ability to
do anything to achieve them.
While the
prospect of a humbled U.S.
imperialism would no doubt be universally welcomed everywhere except in the United States and Israel, it is not without its
dangers. In decline, U.S.
imperialism will become increasingly aggressive and fascistic, desperately
trying to stave off the inevitable. Even a catastrophic collapse of the American
economy would not end the danger, as Nazi Germany demonstrated. The U.S. economy is already on a war footing and the U.S. has the greatest stockpiles of weapons of
mass destruction on the face of the earth, while the Bush Doctrine pledges to
use that military power to launch pre-emptive strikes against any country which
dares to challenge U.S.
hegemony.Therefore, as this
situation develops the danger of imperialist wars of aggression and even
inter-imperialist war will increase, not decrease.