U.S.
Imperialism, Europe, and the Middle East
The present U.S.
project, overweening, even crazy, and criminal in its implications, did not
spring from the head of George W. Bush to be implemented by an extreme right
junta that seized power through dubious elections. This is the project the U.S.
ruling class has unceasingly nurtured since 1945.
By Samir Amin
Monthly Review, Nov. 2004
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. IV, No. 45, December
12-18, 2004
The analysis proposed here regarding the role of Europe and
the Middle East in the global imperialist strategy of the United States is set
in a general historical vision of capitalist expansion that I have developed
elsewhere.1 In this view capitalism has always been, since its
inception, by nature, a polarizing system, that is, imperialist. This
polarization—the concurrent construction of dominant centers and dominated
peripheries, and their reproduction deepening in each stage—is inherent in the
process of accumulation of capital operating on a global scale.
In this theory of the global expansion of capitalism the
qualitative changes in the systems of accumulation, from one phase of its
history to another, shape the successive forms of asymmetric
centers/peripheries polarization, that is, of concrete imperialism. The
contemporary world system will thus remain imperialist (polarizing) throughout
the visible future, in so far as its fundamental logic
remains dominated by capitalist production relations. This theory associates
imperialism with the process of capital accumulation on a worldwide scale,
which I consider as constituting a single reality whose various dimensions are
in fact not separable. Thus it differs as much from the vulgarized version of
the Leninist theory of “imperialism, the highest phase of capitalism” (as if
the former phases of global expansion of capitalism were not polarizing), as
from the contemporary postmodern theories that describe the new globalization
as “post-imperialist.” |
Palestinian militants |
1. Permanent Conflict of Imperialisms with Collective
Imperialism
In its globalized deployment,
imperialism was always conjugated in the plural, from its inception (in the
sixteenth century) until 1945. The permanent and often violent conflict of
imperialisms has occupied as decisive a place in the transformation of the
world as class struggle, through which the fundamental contradictions of
capitalism are expressed. Moreover, social strife and conflicts among
imperialisms are closely articulated, and it is this articulation that has
determined the course of really existing capitalism. The analysis that I have proposed
in this respect differs vastly from that of the “succession of hegemonies.”2
The Second World War ended in a major transformation in the
forms of imperialism, substituting for the multiplicity of imperialisms in
permanent conflict a collective imperialism. This collective imperialism
represented the ensemble of the centers of the world capitalist system, or more
simply, the triad: the United States
and its external Canadian province, western and central Europe,
and Japan. This
new form of imperialist expansion has gone through various phases of its
development, but it has been present ever since 1945. The hegemonic role of the
United States
must be located within this perspective, and every instance of this hegemony
needs to be specified in its relation with the new collective imperialism.
These questions pose problems, which are precisely those that I would wish to
point out here.
The United States benefited enormously from the Second World
War, which had ruined its principal contenders—Europe, the Soviet Union, China,
and Japan. It was thus in a position to exert its economic hegemony, since more
than half of global industrial production was concentrated in the United
States, especially the technologies that would shape the development of the second
half of the century. In addition, it alone possessed nuclear weapons—the new
total weapon.
These dual advantages were nevertheless eroded in a
relatively short period of time (within two decades) by dual recoveries,
economic for capitalist Europe and Japan,
and military for the Soviet Union. We must remember that
this relative retreat of U.S. power resulted in lively speculation about
American decline, contemplating even the ascent of possible alternative
hegemonies (including Europe, Japan, and later China).
Gaullism was born at this time. Charles de Gaulle believed
that the objective of the United States since 1945 had been to control the
entire Old World (Eurasia). Washington had positioned itself strategically to
divide Europe—which in de Gaulle’s view spanned from the Atlantic to the Urals
including “Soviet Russia”—by invoking the specter of aggression from Moscow, a
specter in which de Gaulle never believed. His analysis was realistic, but he
found himself almost alone. To the Atlanticism
promoted by Washington he envisioned a counterstrategy founded on Franco-German
reconciliation and the construction of a non-American Europe carefully
excluding Great Britain, which he judged rightly to be the Trojan horse of Atlanticism. Europe could then open the way to
reconciliation with “Soviet Russia.” Reconciling and drawing together the three
big European populations—French, German and Russian—would put a definite end to
the American project of dominating the world. The internal conflict specific to
the European project can thus be summarized as the choice between two
alternatives: Atlantic Europe, in which Europe is an appendage of the American
project, or non-Atlantic Europe (integrating Russia). This conflict is still
not resolved. But later developments—the end of Gaullism, Great Britain’s
admission to the European Union, Europe’s expansion toward the east, the Soviet
collapse—have combined to vitiate the European project by its dual dilution in
neoliberal economic globalization and in the political-military alignment with
Washington. Moreover, these developments reinforce the strength of the
collective character of triad imperialism.
2. The Project of the U.S.
Ruling Class: Globalize the Monroe
Doctrine
The present U.S.
project, overweening, even crazy, and criminal in its implications, did not
spring from the head of George W. Bush to be implemented by an extreme right
junta that seized power through dubious elections. This is the project the U.S.
ruling class has unceasingly nurtured since 1945, even though its
implementation passed through ups and downs and could not always be pursued
with the consistency and violence demonstrated since the disintegration of the
Soviet Union.
The project always allocated a decisive role to its military
dimension. Very quickly, the United States devised a global military strategy,
dividing the planet into regions and allocating the responsibility for the
control of each of them to a U.S. Military Command. The objective was not only
to encircle the Soviet Union (and China), but also to secure the position of
Washington as the ruler of last resort throughout the world. In other words, it
extended the Monroe Doctrine to the entire planet, which effectively gave to
the United States the exclusive right of managing the whole globe in accordance
with what it defined as its national interests.
This project implies that the sovereignty of the national
interests of the United States
is to be placed above all other principles controlling legitimate political
behavior; it engenders a systematic mistrust toward all supranational rights.
Certainly, imperialisms of the past did not behave differently, and those who
endeavor to minimize and excuse the responsibilities—and the criminal
behavior—of the present U.S. establishment make use of this argument and can
readily find historical antecedents.
But this is precisely what one would have liked to see
change in the history which began after 1945. It is because the horrors of the
Second World War were produced by the conflict of imperialisms and the fascist
powers’ contempt for international law, that the UN was founded on a new
principle proclaiming the illegitimate character of the previously established
sovereign right to wage war. The United States, it could be said, not only
identified itself with this new principle, but had been among the first powers
to do so.
This good initiative—supported at the time by the people of
the entire world—represented indeed a qualitative jump and opened the way for
the progress of civilization, but never won the conviction of the ruling class
of the United States.
The authorities in Washington always felt ill at ease with the concept of the
UN, and today brutally proclaim what they were forced to conceal up until now:
that they do not accept even the concept of an international law superior to
what they consider to be the exigencies of the defense of their own national
interests. We cannot accept excuses for this return to a vision developed by
the Nazis, which accompanied the destruction of the League of Nations. The plea
in favor of international law, developed with talent and elegance by French
Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin at the
Security Council, is not a nostalgic look toward the past but on the contrary a
reminder of what the future must be. On that occasion it was the United States
which defended a past that all decent opinion had definitively proclaimed
obsolete. The implementation of the U.S. project necessarily went through
successive phases, shaped by the particular power relations that defined them.
Immediately after the Second World War American leadership
was not only accepted but even solicited by the bourgeoisie of Europe
and Japan. For
while the menace of a Soviet invasion could convince only the feeble-minded,
its invocation rendered good services to the right as well as to social
democrats hounded by their adversary communist cousins. One could then believe
that the collective character of the new imperialism was only due to this
political factor and that, once their backwardness in relation to the United
States was overcome, Europe and Japan would seek to get rid of Washington’s
cumbersome and henceforth useless supervision. That was not the case. Why?
My explanation appeals to the rise of the national
liberation movements in Asia and Africa—during the two decades following the
1955 Bandung Conference which gave birth to the
movement of nonaligned nations—and to the support they enjoyed from the Soviet
Union and China (each in its own way). Imperialism was then forced to make do,
thus not only accepting peaceful coexistence with a vast area which largely
escaped its control (the socialist world) but also negotiating the terms of the
participation of the Asian and African countries in the imperialist world
system. The collective alignment of the triad under American leadership seemed
useful for managing the North-South relationships of the epoch. This is why the
non-aligned nations found themselves confronted with a practically indivisible
Western bloc.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and
the smothering of the populist nationalist regimes born from national
liberation movements permitted the imperial project of the United
States to be deployed with extreme vigor in
the Middle East, Africa, and Latin
America. True, the project remains in the service of collective
imperialism, at least up to a certain point (which I will try to clarify
later). Its expression has come to be the economic government of the world on
the basis of the principles of neoliberalism,
implemented by the G-7 and the institutions at its service (the WTO, World
Bank, and IMF), and the structural readjustment plans imposed on the
suffocating third world. Even on the political level, it is clear that
initially the Europeans and Japanese aligned themselves with the U.S. project.
They accepted the marginalization of the UN for the benefit of NATO at the time
of the 1991 Gulf War and the 2002 wars in Yugoslavia and Central Asia. This
stage is still not over, even if the 2003 war on Iraq revealed some cracks in
the facade.
The ruling class of the United
States proclaims openly that it will not
tolerate the reconstitution of any economic and military power capable of
questioning its monopoly of domination over the planet, and for this purpose,
it gave itself the right to wage preventive wars. Three principal potential
adversaries are targeted here.
In the first place is Russia,
whose dismemberment, after that of the USSR,
constitutes henceforth a major strategic objective of the United
States. The Russian ruling class does not
appear to have understood this yet. It seems convinced that after having lost
the war, it could win the peace, as had been the case for Germany and Japan. It
forgets that Washington needed the recovery of these two former adversaries
precisely to face the Soviet challenge. The new situation is different; the
United States no longer has a serious competitor. Their first option is then to
destroy the ravaged Russian adversary permanently and completely. Will Putin understand this and initiate the process of weaning
the Russian ruling class of its illusions? In the second place is China, whose
growth and economic success worry the United States. The U.S. strategic
objective is to dismember this large country.
Europe comes third in this global
vision of the new masters of the world. But here the North American
establishment does not appear anxious, at least so far. The unconditional Atlanticism of a few (Great Britain, as well as the new
servile powers of the East), the quicksand of the European project (a point to
which I will return), and the converging interests of the dominant capital of
the collective imperialism of the triad, all contribute to the effacement of
the European project. It remains the European wing of the U.S. project as the
diplomacy of Washington has managed to keep Germany obedient. The reunification
and the conquest of Eastern Europe even seemed to reinforce this alliance.
Germany was encouraged to reclaim its tradition of thrust toward the east, and
the part played by Berlin in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia by the hasty
recognition of Slovenian and Croatian independence was its expression. For the
rest, Germany has been induced to navigate in Washington’s wake. Is there any
change in progress? The German political class appears hesitant and may well be
divided as far as its strategic choices are concerned. The alternative to the Atlanticist alignment is a reinforcement of the nascent
Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis, which would then become the most solid pillar of a
European system independent of Washington.
Our main question can now be reconsidered, that is, the
nature and potential strength of the triad’s collective imperialism, and the
contradictions and weaknesses of its leadership by the United
States.
3. Collective Imperialism of the Triad and Hegemony of the United
States: Their Articulation and
Contradictions
Today’s world is militarily unipolar.
At the same time, some fissures seem to have appeared between the United States
and some of the European countries with regard, in theory at least, to the
political management of a global system united on the principles of liberalism.
Are these fissures only temporary and limited, or do they proclaim some lasting
changes? It will be necessary to analyze in all their complexity the logics of
the new phase of collective imperialism (North-South relationships in the
current language) and the specific objectives of the U.S. project. In this
spirit I will approach succinctly and successively five sets of questions:
Concerning the Evolution of the New Collective Imperialism
The formation of the new collective imperialism finds its
origin in the transformation of the conditions of competition. Only a few
decades ago, the large firms fought their competitive battles essentially over
national markets, whether that of the United States (the largest national
market in the world) or those of the European states (in spite of their modest
size, which handicapped them in relation to the United States). The winners of
the national contests could perform well on the world market. Today the size of
the market necessary for gaining an upper hand in the first cycle of
competition encompasses some 500–600 million potential consumers. The battle
must thus be launched straightaway on the global market and won on this ground.
And those who dominate this market then assert their power over their
respective national terrains. Thorough internationalization becomes the primary
setting of the activities of the large firms. In other words, in the pair
national/global, the terms of causality are reversed: earlier the national
power commanded the global presence and today it is the reverse. Therefore the
transnational firms, whatever their nationality, have common interests in the
management of the world market. These interests are superimposed on the various
mercanti1e conflicts, which define all the forms of competition specific to
capitalism, irrespective of what they are.
The solidarity of the dominant segments of transnationalized capital of all the partners in the triad
is real, and is expressed by their rallying to globalized
neoliberalism. The United
States is seen from this perspective as the
defender (militarily if necessary) of these common interests. Nonetheless,
Washington
does not intend to share equitably the profits of its leadership. The United
States seeks, on the contrary, to reduce its
allies into vassals and thus is only ready to make minor concessions to junior
allies in the triad. Will this conflict of interests within dominant capital
lead to the break-up of the Atlantic alliance? Not impossible, but unlikely.
Concerning the Place of the United
States in the World Economy
A common opinion has it that U.S.
military power only constitutes the tip of the iceberg, extending the country’s
superiority in all areas, notably economic, but even political and cultural.
Therefore, submission to the hegemony to which it pretends would be impossible
to avoid.
I maintain, to the contrary, that in the system of
collective imperialism the United States
does not have decisive economic advantages. The U.S.
production system is far from being the most efficient in the world. In fact,
very few of its sectors would be certain of beating competitors in the truly
free market dreamt of by liberal economists. The U.S.
trade deficit, which increases year by year, went from 100 billion dollars in
1989 to 500 billion in 2002. Moreover, this deficit involved practically all
areas of production. Even the surplus once enjoyed by the United States in the
area of high-technology goods, which stood at 35 billion in 1990, has now
turned into a deficit. Competition between Ariane
rockets and those of NASA, between Airbus and Boeing, testifies to the
vulnerability of the American advantages. The United
States is faced by European and Japanese
competition in high-technology products, Chinese, Korean, and other Asian and
Latin American industrialized countries in common manufactured products, and by
Europe and the southern cone of Latin America
in agriculture. The United States
probably would not be able to win were it not for its recourse to
extra-economic means, violating the principles of liberalism imposed on its
competitors!
In fact, the United States
only benefits from comparative advantages in the armaments sector, precisely
because this sector largely operates outside the rules of the market and
benefits from state support. This advantage probably brings certain benefits
for the civil sphere in its wake (the Internet being the best-known example),
but it also causes serious distortions that handicap many sectors of
production.
The North American economy lives parasitically, to the
detriment of its partners in the world system. “The United States depends for
10 percent of its industrial consumption on goods whose import costs are not
covered by the exports of its own products,” as Emmanuel Todd recalls.3
The world produces, and the United States (which has practically no national
saving) consumes. The advantage of the United
States is that of a predator whose deficit
is covered by loans from others, whether by consent or force. Washington
has employed three primary means to compensate for these deficiencies: repeated
unilateral violations of liberal principles; arms exports; and a search for
greater profits from oil (which presupposes systematic control over the
producers—one of the real reasons for the wars in Central Asia
and Iraq). The
fact is that the essential part of the U.S. deficit is covered by contributions
of capital from Europe, Japan, and the South (from oil-rich countries and comprador
classes of every country of the third world, the poorest included), to which
are added the additional sums brought in from servicing the debt that has been
forced on almost all the countries on the periphery of the world system.
The growth of the Clinton
years, flaunted as the result of a liberalism that Europe
was unfortunately resisting, was in fact largely fake,
and in any case, nongeneralizable, depending on
capital transfers that meant the stagnation of partner economies. For all
sectors of the real production system, U.S.
growth was not better than that of Europe. The American
miracle was fed exclusively by a growth in expenditure produced by growing
social inequalities (financial and personal services, legions of lawyers, and
private police forces). In this sense, Clinton’s
liberalism indeed prepared the conditions for the reactionary wave, and later
the victory of Bush Junior.
The causes of the weakening of the U.S.
production system are complex. They are certainly not conjunctural,
and they cannot be corrected by the adoption of a correct rate of exchange, for
example, or by putting in place a more favorable balance between salaries and
productivity. They are structural. The mediocrity of general education and
training systems, and a deep-rooted prejudice systematically in favor of the
private to the detriment of public services, are among the main reasons for the
profound crisis that U.S.
society is going through.
One should, therefore, be surprised that the Europeans, far
from drawing the conclusions that observation of the deficiencies of the U.S.
economy forces upon one, are actively going about imitating it. Here, too, the
liberal virus does not explain everything, even if it fulfills some useful
functions for the system in paralyzing the left. Widespread privatization and
the dismantling of public services will only reduce the comparative advantages
that “Old Europe” (as Bush qualifies it) still enjoys. However, whatever damage
these things will cause in the long term, such measures offer dominant capital,
which lives in the short term, the chance of making additional profits.
Concerning the Specific Objectives of the U.S.
Project
The hegemonic strategy of the United
States is within the framework of the new
collective imperialism.
Conventional economists do not have the analytical tools
necessary to understand the paramount importance of these objectives. They are
heard repeating ad nauseam that in the new economy the raw materials coming
from the third world are destined to lose their importance and thus the third
world is becoming more and more marginal in the world system. In counterpoint
to this naive and hollow discourse we have the Mein Kampf of the Bush administration,4
and surely it must be acknowledged that the United
States works hard for the right to seize all
the natural resources of the planet to meet its consumption requirements. The
race for raw materials (oil in the first place, but other resources too—water
in particular) has already been resumed in all its virulence. All the more
since these resources are likely to become scarce not only by reason of the
malignant waste inherent in Western consumerism, but also by the development of
the new industrialization of the peripheries.
Moreover, a respectable number of countries from the South
are destined to become increasingly important industrial producers as much for
their internal markets as for their roles in the world market. As importers of
technologies, of capital, also as competitors in exports, they are destined to
disturb the global economic equilibrium with an increasing weight. And it is
not a question only of some East Asian countries (like Korea),
but of immense China
and, tomorrow, India
and the large countries of Latin America. However, far
from being a factor of stabilization, the acceleration of capitalist expansion
in the South can only be the cause of violent conflicts—internal and
international. The reason is that this expansion cannot absorb, under existing
conditions, the enormous reserve of labor force that is concentrated in the
periphery. In fact, the peripheries of the system remain the zone of tempests.
The centers of the capitalist system thus need to exert their domination over
the peripheries and to subject the world’s population to the pitiless
discipline that the satisfaction of their priorities requires.
Within this perspective, the American establishment has
perfectly understood that, in the pursuit of its hegemony, it has three
decisive advantages over its European and Japanese competitors: control over
the natural resources of the globe; its military monopoly; and the weight of
the Anglo-Saxon culture by which the ideological domination of capitalism is
best expressed. The systematic manipulation of these three advantages reveals
many aspects of U.S. policy: the systematic efforts that Washington exerts for
the military control of the oil-producing Middle East; its offensive strategy
with regard to China and Korea—taking advantage of the latter’s “financial
crisis”; and its subtle game aiming at perpetuating divisions in Europe—by
mobilizing its unconditional British ally while preventing any serious
rapprochement between the European Union and Russia. At the level of global
control over the resources of the planet, the United
States has a decisive advantage over Europe
and Japan. Not
only because the United States is the sole international military power, and
thus no strong intervention in the third world can be led without it, but more
because Europe (excluding the ex-USSR) and Japan are by themselves largely
devoid of essential resources for their economy. For example, their dependence
in the energy sector, in particular their oil dependence with regard to the Persian
Gulf, will
persist for a considerable time, even if it were to decrease in relative terms.
By militarily seizing control of this region through the Iraq
war, the rulers of the United States
have demonstrated that they were perfectly conscious of the utility of this
type of pressure, which they bring to bear on their (allied) competitors. Not
long ago the Soviet Union had also understood this
vulnerability of Europe and Japan,
and certain Soviet interventions in the third world sought to remind them of
it, so as to induce them to negotiate on other grounds. It was clear that the deficiencies
of Europe and Japan
could be offset in the event of a serious rapprochement between Europe
and Russia (the
“common home” of Gorbachev). This is the very reason that the danger of this
construction of Eurasia remains Washington’s
nightmare.
Concerning the Conflicts between the United
States and its Triad Partners
If the partners in the triad share the common interests in
the global management of collective imperialism implied in their relationship
with the South, they are nonetheless in a serious potentially conflictual relationship.
The American superpower sustains itself due to the capital
flow that feeds the parasitism of its economy and society. This vulnerability
of the United States
constitutes, therefore, a serious threat for the Washington
project.
Europe in particular and the rest of
the world in general will have to choose one of the following two strategic
options: either invest the surplus of their capital (that is, savings) so as to
provide for the continuing financing of the U.S.
deficit (consumption, investments, and military expenditures) or conserve and
invest this surplus at home.
The conventional economists are ignorant of the problem,
having made the senseless hypothesis that since globalization has supposedly
abolished the nation-state, the primary economic factors (saving and
investment) cannot be managed any more at national levels. But however foolish,
the notion of the identity of saving and investment at the world level is
indeed useful to justify and promote the financing of the U.S.
deficit by others. Such nonsense is a fine instance of tautological reasoning,
where the conclusions at which one wishes to arrive are implied in the very
premise.
Why then is such ineptitude accepted? No doubt, the teams of
scholarly economists who encircle the European (and also Russian and Chinese)
political classes of the right as well as of the electoral left are themselves
victims of their economic alienation, which I term the liberal virus. Besides,
through this option the political judgment of large transnational capital is
expressed. That judgment is that the advantages attained by the management of
the globalized system by the United States on behalf
of collective imperialism prevail over the disadvantages—the tribute which must
be paid to Washington to ensure stability. What is at
issue, after all, is a tribute and not an investment with a good guaranteed
return. There are some countries qualified as poor indebted countries that are
always constrained to service their debt at any price. But there is also a
powerful indebted country that has the means to devalue its debt if considered
necessary.
The other option for Europe (and the
rest of the world) would thus consist in putting an end to this transfusion in
favor of the United States.
The surplus could then be used locally (in Europe), and
the economy revived. The transfusion requires the Europeans to submit to, in
the misleading language of conventional economics, “deflationary policies” that
I term stagnationist—so as to release a surplus of
exportable saving. It makes a recovery in Europe—always
mediocre—dependent on artificial support from the United
States. The mobilization of this surplus for
local employment in Europe would permit the simultaneous
revival of consumption (by rebuilding the social dimension of the economic
management devastated by the liberal virus), investment (particularly in new
technologies and research), and even military expenditure (putting an end to
the advantages of the United States
in this field). To choose this response would imply a rebalancing of the social
relationships in favor of the laboring classes. In Europe
this remains a possible option for capital. The contrast between the United
States and Europe
does not fundamentally go against the interests of the dominant segments of
their respective capitals. It results above all from the difference of
political cultures.
Concerning Questions of Theory Suggested by the Preceding
Reflections
Complicity and competition between the partners in collective
imperialism for the control of the South—the plundering of the natural
resources and submission of its people—can be analyzed from different angles of
vision. I will make, in this respect, three observations, which appear major to
me.
First, the contemporary world system that I describe as
collective imperialist is no less imperialist than its predecessors. It is not
an “Empire” of “post-capitalist” nature.
Second, I have proposed a reading of the history of
capitalism, globalized right from its origin,
centered on the distinction between the various phases of imperialism (of
center/periphery relationships).
Third, internationalization is not synonymous with
unification of the economic system by the deregulated opening up of markets.
The latter—in its successive historical forms (the freedom of trade yesterday,
the freedom of firms today)—always constituted only the project of the dominant
capital of the time. In reality this project was almost always forced to adjust
to requirements that are not the concern of its exclusive and specific internal
logic. It thus could never be implemented except in some short moments of
history. The “free exchange” promoted by the major industrial power of its
time, Great Britain, was effective only during two decades (1860–1880) and was
succeeded by a century (1880–1980) characterized by the conflict between the
imperialists and the strong de-linking of the socialist countries and the more
modest de-linking of the populist nationalist countries (in the era of Bandung from 1955 to 1975). The current moment of the
reunification of the world market inaugurated by neoliberalism
since 1980, extended to the whole planet with the Soviet collapse, is probably
not destined to experience a better fate. The chaos that it generates testifies
to its character as the “permanent utopia of capital,” the phrase by which I
have described this system since 1990.
4. The Middle East in the Imperialist
System; U.S.
Regional Dominance after the Fall of the USSR
The Middle East, henceforth to be
considered together with the bordering areas of the Caucasus
and ex-Soviet Central Asia, occupies a position of
particular importance in the geostrategy and
geopolitics of imperialism, and particularly of the U.S.
hegemonic project. It owes this position to three factors: its oil wealth; its
geographical position in the heart of the Old World; and
the fact that it constitutes the soft underbelly of the world system.
The access to oil at a relatively cheap price is vital for
the economy of the dominant triad, and the best means of ensuring this
guaranteed access consists in securing political control of the area.
But the region also holds its importance equally due to its
geographical position, being at the center of the Old World,
at equal distance from Paris,
Beijing,
Singapore, and Johannesburg.
In the olden times control over this inevitable crossing point gave the
Caliphate the privilege of drawing the chief benefits from that epoch’s long
distance trade. After the Second World War the region, located on the southern
side of the Soviet Union, was crucial to the military
strategy of encircling Soviet power. And the region did not lose its importance
with the collapse of the Soviet adversary. U.S.
dominance in the region reduces Europe, dependent on the
Middle East for its energy supply, to vassalage. Once Russia
was subdued, China
and India were
also subjected to permanent energy blackmail. Control over the Middle
East would thus allow an extension of the Monroe Doctrine to the Old
World, the objective of the hegemonist
project of the United States.
But the continuous and constant efforts made by Washington since 1945 to secure
control over the region, while excluding the British and French, has not been
so far crowned with success. One recalls the failure of the attempt to attach
the region to NATO through the Baghdad Pact, and the fall of one of their most
faithful allies, the Shah of Iran.
The reason is quite simply that the project of Arab (and
Iranian) nationalist populism entered headlong into conflict with the
objectives of American hegemonism. This Arab project
hoped to force the Great Powers to recognize the independence of the Arab
world. The nonaligned movement formulated in 1955 at Bandung by the ensemble of
liberation movements of Asian and African people was the strongest current of
the time. The Soviets quickly understood that by giving their support to this
project they could set back the aggressive plans of Washington.
This epoch came to an end, in the first instance because the
populist nationalist project of the Arab world quickly exhausted its potential
for transformation, and the nationalist powers sank into dictatorships empty of
either hope or plans for change. The vacuum created by this drift opened the
way for political Islam and the obscurantist autocracies of the Persian
Gulf, the preferred allies of Washington.
The region has become one of the underbellies of the global system, vulnerable
to external intervention (including military) that the current regimes, for a
lack of legitimacy, are incapable of containing or discouraging. The region
constituted, and continues to constitute, a zone of the first priority (like
the Caribbean) within the American geomilitary
division of the entire planet—a zone where the United
States is granted the “right” of military
intervention. Since 1990, they are not deprived of anything!
The United States
operates in the Middle East in close cooperation with
their two unconditional faithful allies—Turkey
and Israel. Europe
is kept away from the region, forced to accept that the United
States is defending the global vital
interests of the triad, that is to say its oil supply. In spite of signs of
obvious irritation after the Iraq
war, in this region the Europeans by and large continue to sail in Washington’s
wake.
The Role of Israel
and the Palestinian Resistance
Israel’s
colonial expansionism constitutes a real challenge. Israel
is the only country in the world that refuses to recognize its borders as
definite (and for this reason ought not to have the right to be a member of the
United Nations). Like the United States
in the nineteenth century, it claims the right to conquer new areas for the
expansion of its colonization and to treat the people who had lived there for
thousands of years like “redskins.” Israel
is the only country that openly declares itself not bound by the resolutions of
the UN.
The war of 1967, planned in agreement with Washington in
1965, was in pursuit of several goals: to start the collapse of the populist
nationalist regimes; to break their alliance with the Soviet Union; to force
them to reposition themselves on American terms; and to open new grounds for
Zionist colonization. In the territories conquered in 1967 Israel
set up a system of apartheid inspired by that of South
Africa.
It is here that the interests of dominant capital meet up
with those of Zionism. A rich, powerful, and modernized Arab world would call
into question the right of the West to plunder its oil resources, which are
necessary for the continuation of the waste associated with capitalist
accumulation. Therefore, the political powers in the countries of the triad—all
faithful servants of dominant transnational capital—do not want a modernized
and powerful Arab world.
The alliance between Western powers and Israel
is thus founded on the solid basis of their common interests. This alliance is
neither the product of European feelings of guilt for anti-Semitism and Nazi
crime, nor that of the skill of the “Jewish lobby” in exploiting this
sentiment. If the Powers thought that their interests were harmed by the
Zionist colonial expansionism, they would quickly find the means of overcoming
their guilt complex and of neutralizing this lobby. This I do not doubt, not
being among those who naively believe that public opinion in the democratic
countries, such as it is, imposes its views on these Powers. We know that
opinion also is manufactured. Israel
is incapable of resisting for more than a few days even moderate measures of a
blockade such as the Western powers inflicted on Yugoslavia,
Iraq, and Cuba.
It would thus not be difficult to bring Israel
to its senses and to create the conditions of a true peace, if it were wanted,
which it is not.
Shortly after defeat in the 1967 war, Egypt’s
President Anwar Sadat
stated that since the United States
held “90 percent of the cards” (his expression), it was necessary to break with
the Soviet Union and reintegrate with the Western camp.
He claimed that by doing so, one could get Washington
to exert sufficient pressure on Israel
to bring it to its senses. Beyond similar strategic ideas peculiar to Sadat—whose incoherence has been proven by events—Arab
public opinion remained largely incapable of understanding the dynamics of the
global expansion of capitalism, and even less capable of identifying its true
contradictions and weaknesses. Is it not still said that “Someday the West will
understand that its long run interest is to maintain good relations with the
two hundred million Arabs and will choose not to sacrifice these relations for
unconditional support for Israel?”
This is implicitly to think that the “West” in question, which is the imperial
center of capital, wishes a modernized and developed Arab world rather than
wanting to maintain the Arab world in impotence, for which support for Israel
is manifestly useful.
The choice made by the Arab governments—with the exception
of Syria and Lebanon—which
led them by way of the negotiations of Madrid
and Oslo (1993) to subscribe to the
American plan of the so-called definitive peace, could not yield results other
than those which it has yielded: encouraging Israel
to solidify its expansionist project. By openly rejecting the terms of the
Oslo
contract today, Ariel Sharon demonstrates merely what was already clear—that it
was not a matter of a project for definitive peace, but of opening a new phase
in Zionist colonial expansion.
Israel
and the Western powers supporting its project have imposed a state of permanent
war in the region. In its turn, this state of permanent war reinforces the
autocratic Arab regimes. This blockage of any possible democratic evolution
weakens the chances of an Arabic revival, and thus reinforces the alliance of
the dominant capital with the hegemonist strategy of
the United States.
The circle is completed: the Israeli-American alliance serves perfectly the
interests of the two partners.
Initially the system of apartheid deployed after 1967 gave
the impression of being capable of achieving its ends—the management of
everyday life in the occupied territories by the fearful elites and commercial
bourgeoisie, seemingly with the acceptance of the Palestinian people. From its
remote exile in Tunis the PLO,
removed from the region after the invasion of Lebanon
by the Israeli army (1982), appeared no longer able to
call the Zionist annexation into question.
The first Intifada exploded in
December 1987. It expressed the sudden emergence of the popular classes and
remarkably of its poorest segments confined in the refugee camps. The Intifada hamstrung Israeli power by the organization of
systematic civil disobedience. Israel
reacted with brutality, but managed neither to restore its effective police
power nor to place the fearful Palestinian middle classes back in the saddle.
On the contrary, the Intifada called for the mass
return of exiled political forces, the constitution of new local forms of
organization, and the adherence of the middle classes to a committed fight for
liberation. The Intifada was provoked by the youth, chebab al Intifada, initially not
organized within the formal networks of the PLO, but by no means a hostile
competitor to them. The four components of the PLO (Fatah,
devoted to its chief Yasser Arafat, the Democratic
Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Communist Party) threw
themselves into the Intifada and for this reason
gained the sympathy of the major part of the chebab.
The Muslim Brotherhood, sidelined by their inactivity during the preceding
years despite some actions by Islamic Jihad (which made its appearance in
1980), yielded its place to a new expression of struggle—Hamas,
constituted in 1988.
As the first Intifada gave signs
of running out of breath after two years, and with
Israeli repression becoming more and more violent (including the use of
firearms against children and closing the green line to block nearly the only
source of income for Palestinian workers), the scene was set for “negotiation.”
The initiative was taken by the United States,
leading first to the Madrid talks
(1991), and then to the so-called Oslo Peace Agreements (1993). These
agreements allowed the return of the PLO to the occupied territories and its
transformation into a Palestinian Authority.
The Oslo
agreements imagined the transformation of the occupied territories into one or
more Bantustans, definitively integrated into the
Israeli region. Within this framework, the Palestinian Authority was to be only
a false state—as that of the Bantustans—and in fact to
be the transmission belt of the Zionist order.
Returning to Palestine,
the PLO—now the Palestinian Authority—managed to establish its order, but not
without some ambiguities. The authority absorbed in its new structures the
major part of chebab, which had coordinated the Intifada. It achieved legitimacy by the electoral
consultation of 1996, in which the Palestinians participated en masse (80
percent); an overwhelming majority elected Arafat the president of the
authority. The authority remained nevertheless in an ambiguous position: would it
agree to fulfill the functions that Israel,
the United States
and Europe allotted it—that of government of a Bantustan,
or would it align with the Palestinian people who refused to submit?
As the Palestinian people rejected the Bantustan
project, Israel
decided to denounce the Oslo
agreement, although it had dictated its terms, and substituted the use of pure
and simple military violence. The provocation at the Jerusalem holy places
engineered by the war criminal Sharon in 1998 (but with the help of the Labor
government that furnished the tanks), and the triumphal election of this same
criminal at the head of the Israeli government (and the collaboration of the
doves like Simon Peres with this government), were the cause of the second Intifada, which is in progress.
Will this succeed in liberating the Palestinian people from
submission to Zionist apartheid? It is too early to say. In any event, the
Palestinian people now have a true national liberation movement. It has its own
specificities. It does not follow the one party style of homogeneity (though
the reality of single party states was always more complex). It has components
that conserve their own personality, their visions of the future, including
their ideologies, their militants and clienteles, but which appear to know how
to cooperate in leading the struggle.
The U.S.
Project for the Middle East
The erosion of the regimes of populist nationalism and the
disappearance of Soviet support gave the United
States the opportunity to implement its
project for the area.
The control of the Middle East is
certainly a cornerstone of Washington’s
project of global hegemony. How then does the United
States imagine securing control? It is
already a decade since Washington took the initiative of advancing the curious
project of a “Common Market of the Middle East” in which some countries of the
Persian Gulf would have supplied capital, while other Arab countries supplied
cheap labor, and reserving for Israel technological control and the functions
of the privileged and grateful intermediary. Accepted by the Gulf countries and
Egypt, the
project was confronted nevertheless with the refusal of Syria,
Iraq, and Iran.
It was thus necessary to knock down these three regimes for the project to
advance. Now that has been done for Iraq.
The question then is what type of political regime must be
set up in order to be able to sustain the project. Washington’s
propagandistic discourse is about “democracies.” In fact, Washington
is busy doing nothing but substituting the so-called Islamic obscurantist
autocracies for the worn-out autocracies of outmoded populism (covering the
operation with drivel about its respect for the cultural specificity of the
communities). The renewed alliance with a so-called moderate political Islam (one
that is capable of controlling the situation with sufficient efficacy to
prohibit the terrorist drifts—defining “terrorist” as threats directed against,
and only against, the United States) now constitutes the axis of Washington’s
political choice. It is within this perspective that reconciliation will be
sought with the antiquated autocracy of the Middle Eastern social system.
Confronted with the deployment of the U.S.
project, Europeans invented their own project, baptized as the
“Euro-Mediterranean partnership.” A decidedly cowardly project—encumbered with
incoherent prattling which, of course, also proposed to reconcile the Arab
countries with Israel.
By excluding the Gulf countries from the Euro-Mediterranean dialogue it was
conceded that the management and control of these latter countries was the
exclusive responsibility of Washington.
The sharp contrast between the bold audacity of the American
project and the debility of the European project is a good indicator that
really existing Atlanticism has no place for a shared
responsibility and association in decision making that would place the United
States and Europe on an equal footing. Tony Blair, who has made himself the
advocate of the construction of a unipolar world,
thinks he is able to justify this option because Atlanticism
would be founded on this supposed sharing. Washington’s
arrogance every day reveals this hope to be illusory, if it has not from the
beginning been a bad faith effort to fool European opinion. The realism of
Stalin’s statement that the Nazis “did not know where it was necessary to stop”
is precisely applicable to those who control the United
States. Blair appeals to hopes that resemble
only those placed in Mussolini’s supposed capacity to assuage Hitler.
Is another European option possible? Has it begun to take
shape? Does Chirac’s speech opposing the “unipolar Atlantic”
world (which he seemingly well understands to be in fact synonymous with the
unilateral hegemony of the United States)
announce the construction of a multi-polar world and an end to Atlanticism? For this possibility to become a reality, it
would first be necessary that Europe free itself of the
quicksand in which it slips and sinks.
5. The European Project: Mired in Liberal Quicksand
All the governments of the European states have been won
over to the theses of liberalism. This regimentation of the European states
means nothing less than the obliteration of the European project by its double
dilution, economic (the advantages of the European economic union are dissolved
in economic globalization) and political (European political and military
autonomy disappears). There is not, at the present time, any European project.
A North Atlantic project (or eventually of the triad)
under American command has been substituted for it.
After the Second World War, Western Europe
managed to make up for its economic and technological backwardness vis-à-vis
the United States.
After 1989, the Soviet threat was gone as were the violent adversities that had
marked European history during the past century and a half: the three major
countries of the continent—France,
Germany, and Russia—are
reconciled. All these developments are, in my opinion, positive and rich with
still more potential. Certainly they are superimposed upon an economic base
restructured by the principles of liberalism. Yet this liberalism was tempered
until the 1980s by the social-democratic historical compromise that forced
capital to adjust itself to the demands of social justice expressed by the
working classes. Afterwards, the deployment continued in a new social framework
inspired by American-style, antisocial liberalism.
This last turn has plunged the European societies into a
multidimensional crisis. Essentially it is the economic crisis, nothing more and
nothing less, immanent in the liberal choice. The crisis was aggravated by the
European countries falling into line with the economic requirements of U.S.
leadership: Europe consenting up to now to finance the
latter’s deficit to the detriment of its own interests. Then there is a social
crisis, which is accentuated by the rise of resistances and the struggles of
the popular classes against the fatal consequences of the liberal option.
Finally, there is the beginning of a political crisis—the refusal to align, at
least unconditionally, over the U.S.
demand for an endless war against the South.
The made-in-USA wars have certainly stirred up public
opinion (the latest Iraq
war has had that effect globally) and even certain governments, initially that
of France and
then those of Germany,
Russia, and China,
too. The fact remains that these same governments have not called into question
their faithful alignment over the needs of liberalism. This major contradiction
will have to be overcome in one way or another, either by their submission to
the requirements of Washington,
or by a true rupture putting an end to Atlanticism.
The major political conclusion that I draw from this
analysis is that Europe cannot pass beyond Atlanticism as long as political alliances defining the
blocs in power remain centered on dominant transnational capital. It is only if
social and political struggles manage to modify the content of these blocs, and
to impose new historical compromises between capital and labor, that Europe
would be able to distance itself from Washington,
permitting the eventual revival of a European project. Under these conditions
Europe also could—even ought to—become engaged at the international level in
its relationships with the East and the South, on a path other than that traced
by the exclusive requirements of collective imperialism. Such a course would
begin its participation in the long march beyond capitalism. In other words, Europe
will be of the left (the term left being taken seriously) or will not be at
all. (Posted by Bulatlat)
Notes
1. Samir Amin,
Class and Nation (New York: NYU Press, 1981); Samir Amin, Eurocentrism, (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1989); Samir Amin, Obsolescent Capitalism (London:
Zed Books, 2003); Samir Amin,
The Liberal Virus (New York,
Monthly Review Press, 2004).
2. The “succession of hegemonies” reading is
“Western-centric” in the sense that it considers that the transformations
operating at the heart of the system command the global evolution of the system
in a decisive and almost exclusive manner. The reactions of the people of the
peripheries to the imperialist deployment should not be underestimated. The
independence of the Americas,
the great revolutions made in the name of socialism (Russia
and China), and
the reconquest of independence by the Asian and
African countries, were provocations to the system from the peripheries. And I
do not believe that one can account for the history of world capitalism without
accounting for the adjustments that these transformations imposed even on
central capitalism itself. Then also because the history of imperialism appears
to me to have been shaped more through the conflict of imperialisms than by the
type of order that successive hegemonies have imposed. The apparent periods of hegemony
have been always extremely short and the said hegemony very relative.
3. Emmanuel Todd, After the Empire: The Breakdown of the
American Order (New York:
Columbia
University Press, 2003).
4. Office of the White House, The
National Security Strategy of the United States,
September 2002,.http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html.
Samir Amin is director of the Third
World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His recent books include Obsolescent
Capitalism: Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder (Zed Books, 2004) and
The Liberal Virus:
Permanent War and the Americanization of the World (Monthly Review
Press, 2004).
This is an
abridgement of “The U.S. Imperialism and the Middle East” in Pratyush
Chandra, Anuradha Ghosh,
and Ravi Kumar, eds., The Politics of Imperialism
and Counterstrategies (Delhi, India: Aakar
Books, 2004).U.S. Imperialism, Europe, and the Middle East