Networks of Empire and Realignments of World Power
by Prof James Petras
Imperial states build networks which link economic, military and
political activities into a coherent mutually reinforcing system. This
task is largely performed by the various institutions of the imperial
state. Thus imperial action is not always directly economic, as
military action in one country or region is necessary to open or
protect economic zones. Nor are all military actions decided by
economic interests if the leading sector of the imperial state is
decidedly militarist.
Moreover, the sequence of imperial action may vary according to the
particular conditions necessary for empire building. Thus state aid
may buy collaborators; military intervention may secure client regimes
followed later by private investors. In other circumstances, the entry
of private corporations may precede state intervention.
In either private or state economic and/or military led penetration,
in furtherance of empire-building, the strategic purpose is to exploit
the special economic and geopolitical features of the targeted country
to create empire-centered networks. In the post Euro-centric colonial
world, the privileged position of the US in its empire-centered
policies, treaties, trade and military agreements is disguised and
justified by an ideological gloss, which varies with time and
circumstances. In the war to break-up Yugoslavia and establish client
regimes, as in Kosovo, imperial ideology utilized humanitarian
rhetoric. In the genocidal wars in the Middle East, anti-terrorism and
anti-Islamic ideology is central. Against China, democratic and human
rights rhetoric predominates. In Latin America, receding imperial
power relies on democratic and anti-authoritarian rhetoric aimed at
the democratically elected Chavez government.
The effectiveness of imperial ideology is in direct relation to the
capacity of empire to promote viable and dynamic development
alternatives to their targeted countries. By that criteria imperial
ideology has had little persuasive power among target populations. The
Islamic phobic and anti-terrorist rhetoric has made no impact on the
people of the Middle East and alienated the Islamic world. Latin
America's lucrative trade relations with the Chavist government and
the decline of the US economy has undermined Washington's ideological
campaign to isolate Venezuela.The US human rights campaign against
China has been totally ignored throughout the EU, Africa, Latin
America, Oceana and by the 500 biggest US MNC (and even by the US
Treasury busy selling treasury bonds to China to finance the
ballooning US budget deficit).
The weakening influence of imperial propaganda and the declining
economic leverage of Washington, means that the US imperial networks
built over the past half century are being eroded or at least subject
to centrifugal forces. Former fully integrated networks in Asia are
now merely military bases as the economies secure greater autonomy and
orient toward China and beyond. In other words the imperial networks
are now being transformed into limited operations' outposts, rather
than centers for imperial economic plunder.
Imperial Networks: The Central Role of Collaborators
Empire-building is essentially a process of penetrating a country or
region, establishing a privileged position and retaining control in
order to secure (1) lucrative resources, markets and cheap labor (2)
establish a military platform to expand into adjoining countries and
regions (3) military bases to establish a chock-hold over strategic
road or waterways to deny or limit access of competitors or
adversaries (4) intelligence and clandestine operations against
adversaries and competitors.
History has demonstrated that the lowest cost in sustaining long term,
long scale imperial domination is by developing local collaborators,
whether in the form of political, economic and/or military leaders
operating from client regimes. Overt politico-military imperial rule
results in costly wars and disruption, especially among a broad array
of classes adversely affected by the imperial presence.
Formation of collaborator rulers and classes results from diverse
short and long term imperial policies ranging from direct military,
electoral and extra-parliamentary activities to middle to long term
recruitment, training and orientation of promising young leaders via
propaganda and educational programs, cultural-financial inducements,
promises of political and economic backing on assuming political
office and through substantial clandestine financial backing.
The most basic appeal by imperial policy-makers to the "new ruling
class" in emerging client state is the opportunity to participate in
an economic system tied to the imperial centers, in which local elites
share economic wealth with their imperial benefactors. To secure mass
support, the collaborator classes obfuscate the new forms of imperial
subservience and economic exploitation by emphasizing political
independence, personal freedom, economic opportunity and private
consumerism.
The mechanisms for the transfer of power to an emerging client state
combine imperial propaganda, financing of mass organizations and
electoral parties, as well as violent coups or 'popular uprisings'.
Authoritarian bureaucratically ossified regimes relying on police
controls to limit or oppose imperial expansion are "soft targets".
Selective human rights campaigns become the most effective
organizational weapon to recruit activists and promote leaders for the
imperial-centered new political order. Once the power transfer takes
place, the former members of the political, economic and cultural
elite are banned, repressed, arrested and jailed. A new homogenous
political culture of competing parties embracing the imperial centered
world order emerges. The first order of business beyond the political
purge is the privatization and handover of the commanding heights of
the economy to imperial enterprises. The client regimes proceed to
provide soldiers to engage as paid mercenaries in imperial wars and to
transfer military bases to imperial forces as platforms of
intervention. The entire "independence charade" is accompanied by the
massive dismantling of public social welfare programs (pensions, free
health and education), labor codes and full employment policies.
Promotion of a highly polarized class structure is the ultimate
consequence of client rule. The imperial-centered economies of the
client regimes, as a replica of any commonplace satrap state, is
justified (or legitimated) in the name of an electoral system dubbed
democratic – in fact a political system dominated by new capitalist
elites and their heavily funded mass media.
Imperial centered regimes run by collaborating elites spanning the
Baltic States, Central and Eastern Europe to the Balkans is the most
striking example of imperial expansion in the 20th century. The
break-up and take-over of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc and
its incorporation into the US led NATO alliance and the European Union
resulted in imperial hubris. Washington made premature declarations of
a unipolar world while Western Europe proceeded to plunder public
resources, ranging from factories to real estate, exploiting cheap
labor, overseas and via immigration, drawing on a formidable 'reserve
army' to undermine living standards of unionized labor in the West.
The unity of purpose of European and US imperial regimes allowed for
the peaceful joint takeover of the wealth of the new regions by
private monopolies. The imperial states initially subsidized the new
client regimes with large scale transfers and loans on condition that
they allowed imperial firms to seize resources, real estate, land,
factories, service sectors, media outlets etc. Heavily indebted states
went from a sharp crises in the initial period to 'spectacular' growth
to profound and chronic social crises with double digit unemployment
in the 20 year period of client building. While worker protests
emerged as wages deteriorated, unemployment soared and welfare
provisions were cut, destitution spread. However the 'new middle
class' embedded in the political and media apparatuses and in joint
economic ventures are sufficiently funded by imperial financial
institutions to protect their dominance.
The dynamic of imperial expansion in East, Central and Southern Europe
however did not provide the impetus for strategic advance, because of
the ascendancy of highly volatile financial capital and a powerful
militarist caste in the Euro-American political centers. In important
respects military and political expansion was no longer harnessed to
economic conquest. The reverse was true: economic plunder and
political dominance served as instruments for projecting military
power.
Imperial Sequences: From War for Exploitation to Exploitation for War
The relations between imperial military policies and economic
interests are complex and changing over time and historical context.
In some circumstances, an imperial regime will invest heavily in
military personnel and augment monetary expenditures to overthrow an
anti-imperialist ruler and establish a client regime far beyond any
state or private economic return. For example, US wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, proxy wars in Somalia and Yemen have not resulted in
greater profits for US multinational corporations' nor has it enhanced
private exploitation of raw materials, labor or markets. At best,
imperial wars have provided profits for mercenary contractors,
construction companies and related 'war industries' profiting through
transfers from the US treasury and the exploitation of US taxpayers,
mostly wage and salary earners.
In many cases, especially after the Second World War, the emerging US
imperial state lavished a multi-billion dollar loan and aid program
for Western Europe. The Marshall Plan forestalled anti-capitalist
social upheavals and restored capitalist political dominance. This
allowed for the emergence of NATO (a military alliance led and
dominated by the US). Subsequently, US multi-national corporations
invested in and traded with Western Europe reaping lucrative profits,
once the imperial state created favorable political and economic
conditions. In other words imperial state politico-military
intervention preceded the rise and expansion of US multi-national
capital. A myopic short term analysis of the initial post-war activity
would downplay the importance of private US economic interests as the
driving force of US policy. Extending the time period to the following
two decades, the interplay between initial high cost state military
and economic expenditures with later private high return gains
provides a perfect example of how the process of imperial power
operates.
The role of the imperial state as an instrument for opening,
protecting and expanding private market, labor and resource
exploitation corresponds to a time in which both the state and the
dominant classes were primarily motivated by industrial empire
building.
US directed military intervention and coups in Iran (1953), Guatemala
(1954), Chile (1973), the Dominican Republic (1965) were linked to
specific imperial economic interests and corporations. For example, US
and English oil corporations sought to reverse the nationalization of
oil in Iran. The US, United Fruit Company opposed the agrarian reform
policies in Guatemala. The major US copper and telecommunication
companies supported and called for the US backed coup in Chile.
In contrast, current US military interventions and wars in the Middle
East, South Asia and the Horn of Africa are not promoted by US
multi-nationals. The imperial policies are promoted by militarists and
Zionists embedded in the state, mass media and powerful 'civil'
organizations. The same imperial methods (coups and wars) serve
different imperial rulers and interests.
Clients, Allies and Puppet Regimes
Imperial networks involve securing a variety of complementary
economic, military and political 'resource bases' which are both part
of the imperial system and retain varying degrees of political and
economic autonomy.
In the dynamic earlier stages of US Empire building, from roughly the
1950's – 1970's, US multi-national corporations and the economy as a
whole dominated the world economy. Its allies in Europe and Asia were
highly dependent on US markets, financing and development. US military
hegemony was reflected in a series of regional military pacts which
secured almost instant support for US regional wars, military coups
and the construction of military bases and naval ports on their
territory. Countries were divided into 'specializations' which served
the particular interests of the US Empire. Western Europe was a
military outpost, industrial partner and ideological collaborator.
Asia, primarily Japan and South Korea served as 'frontline military
outposts', as well as industrial partners. Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines were essentially client regimes which provided raw
materials as well as military bases. Singapore and Hong Kong were
financial and commercial entrepots. Pakistan was a client military
regime serving as a frontline pressure on China.
Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Gulf mini-states, ruled by client
authoritarian regimes, provided oil and military bases. Egypt and
Jordan and Israel anchored imperial interests in the Middle East.
Beirut served as the financial center for US, European and Middle East
bankers.
Africa and Latin America including client and nationalist-populist
regimes were a source of raw materials as well as markets for finished
goods and cheap labor.
The prolonged US-Vietnam war and Washington's subsequent defeat eroded
the power of the empire. Western Europe, Japan and South Korea's
industrial expansion challenged US industrial primacy. Latin America's
pursuit of nationalist, import – substitution policies forced US
investment toward overseas manufacturing. In the Middle East
nationalist movements toppled US clients in Iran and Iraq and
undermined military outposts. Revolutions in Angola, Namibia,
Mozambique, Algeria, Nicaragua and elsewhere curtailed Euro-American
'open ended' access to raw materials, at least temporarily.
The decline of the US Empire was temporarily arrested by the collapse
of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the
establishment of client regimes throughout the region. Likewise the
upsurge of imperial-centered client regimes in Latin America between
the mid 1970's to the end of the 1990's gave the appearance of an
imperialist recovery. The 1990's however was not the beginning of a
repeat of the early 1950's imperial take off: it was the "last hurrah"
before a long term irreversible decline. The entire imperial political
apparatus, so successful in its clandestine operations in subverting
the Soviet and Eastern European regimes, played a marginal role when
it came to capitalizing on the economic opportunities which ensued.
Germany and other EU countries led the way in the takeover of
lucrative privatized enterprises. Russian- Israeli oligarchs(seven of
the top eight) seized and pillaged privatized strategic industries,
banks and natural resources. The principal US beneficiaries were the
banks and Wall Street firms which laundered billions of illicit
earnings and collected lucrative fees from mergers, acquisitions,
stock listings and other less than transparent activities. In other
words, the collapse of Soviet collectivism strengthened the
parasitical financial sector of the US Empire. Worse still, the
assumption of a 'unipolar world' fostered by US ideologues, played
into the hands of the militarists, who now assumed that former
constraints on US military assaults on nationalists and Soviet allies
had disappeared. As a result military intervention became the
principle driving force in US empire building, leading to the first
Iraq war, the Yugoslav and Somali invasion and the expansion of US
military bases throughout the former Soviet bloc and Eastern Europe.
At the very pinnacle of US global-political and military power during
the 1990's, with all the major Latin American regimes enveloped in the
empire-centered neo-liberal warp, the seeds of decay and decline set
in.
The economic crises of the late 1990's, led to major uprisings and
electoral defeats of practically all US clients in Latin America,
spelling the decline of US imperial domination. China's extraordinary
dynamic and cumulative growth displaced US manufacturing capital and
weakened US leverage over rulers in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The vast transfer of US state resources to overseas imperial
adventures, military bases and the shoring up of clients and allies
led to domestic decline.
The US empire, passively facing economic competitors displacing the US
in vital markets and engaged in prolonged and unending wars which
drained the treasury, attracted a cohort of mediocre policymakers who
lacked a coherent strategy for rectifying policies and reconstructing
the state to serve productive activity capable of 'retaking markets'.
Instead the policies of open-ended and unsustainable wars played into
the hands of a special sub-group (sui generis) of militarists,
American Zionists. They capitalized on their infiltration of strategic
positions in the state, enhanced their influence in the mass media and
a vast network of organized "pressure groups" to reinforce US
subordination to Israel's drive for Middle East supremacy.
The result was the total "unbalancing" of the US imperial apparatus:
military action was unhinged from economic empire building. A highly
influential upper caste of Zionist-militarists harnessed US military
power to an economically marginal state (Israel), in perpetual
hostility toward the 1.5 billion Muslim world. Equally damaging,
American Zionist ideologues and policymakers promoted repressive
institutions and legislation and Islamophobic ideological propaganda
designed to terrorize the US population. Equally important
islamophobic ideology served to justify permanent war in South Asia
and the Middle East and the exorbitant military budgets, at a time of
sharply deteriorating domestic socio-economic conditions. Hundreds of
billions of dollars were spent unproductively as "Homeland Security"
which strived in every way to recruit, train, frame and arrest
Afro-American Muslim men as "terrorists". Thousands of secret agencies
with hundreds of thousands of national, state and local officials
spied on US citizens who at some point may have sought to speak or act
to rectify or reform the militarist-financial-Zionist centered
imperialist policies.
By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the US empire
could only destroy adversaries (Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan)
provoke military tensions (Korean peninsula, China Sea) and undermine
relations with potentially lucrative trading partners (Iran,
Venezuela). Galloping authoritarianism fused with fifth column Zionist
militarism to foment islamophobic ideology. The convergence of
authoritarian mediocrities, upwardly mobile knaves and fifth column
tribal loyalists in the Obama regime precluded any foreseeable
reversal of imperial decay.
China's growing global economic network and dynamic advance in cutting
edge applied technology in everything from alternative energy to high
speed trains, stands in contrast to the Zionist-militarist infested
empire of the US.
The US demands on client Pakistan rulers to empty their treasury in
support of US Islamic wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, stands in
contrast to the $30 billion dollar Chinese investments in
infrastructure, energy and electrical power and multi-billion dollar
increases in trade.
US $3 billion dollar military subsidies to Israel stand in contrast to
China's multi-billion dollar investments in Iranian oil and trade
agreements. US funding of wars against Islamic countries in Central
and South Asia stands in contrast to Turkey's expanding economic trade
and investment agreements in the same region. China has replaced the
US as the key trading partner in leading South American countries,
while the US unequal "free trade" agreement(NAFTA) impoverishes
Mexico. Trade between the European Union and China exceeds that with
the US.
In Africa, the US subsidizes wars in Somalia and the Horn of Africa,
while China signs on to multi-billion dollar investment and trade
agreements, building up African infrastructure in exchange for access
to raw materials. There is no question that the economic future of
Africa is increasingly linked to China.
The US Empire, in contrast, is in a deadly embrace with an
insignificant colonial militarist state (Israel), failed states in
Yemen and Somalia, corrupt stagnant client regimes in Jordan and Egypt
and the decadent rent collecting absolutist petrol-states of Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf. All form part of an unproductive atavistic
coalition bent on retaining power via military supremacy. Yet Empires
of the 21st century are built on the bases of productive economies
with global networks linked to dynamic trading partners.
Recognizing the economic primacy and market opportunities linked to
becoming part of the Chinese global network, former or existing US
clients and even puppet rulers have begun to edge away from submission
to US mandates. Fundamental shifts in economic relations and political
alignments have occurred throughout Latin America. Brazil, Venezuela,
Bolivia and other countries support Iran's non-military nuclear
program in defiance of Zionist led Washington aggression. Several
countries have defied Israel-US policymakers by recognizing Palestine
as a state. Trade with China surpasses trade with the US in the
biggest countries in the region.
Puppet regimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have signed major
economic agreements with China, Iran and Turkey even while the US
pours billions to bolster its military position. Turkey an erstwhile
military client of the US-NATO command broadens its own quest for
capitalist hegemony by expanding economic ties with Iran, Central Asia
and the Arab-Muslim world, challenging US-Israeli military hegemony.
The US Empire still retains major clients and nearly a thousand
military bases around the world. As client and puppet regimes decline,
Washington increases the role and scope of extra-territorial death
squad operations from 50 to 80 countries. The growing independence of
regimes in the developing world is especially fueled by an economic
calculus: China offers greater economic returns and less
political-military interference than the US.
Washington's imperial network is increasingly based on military ties
with allies: Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan in the Far East and
Oceana; the European Union in the West; and a smattering of Central
and South American states in the South. Even here, the military allies
are no longer economic dependencies: Australia and New Zealand's
principle export markets are in Asia (China). EU-China trade is
growing exponentially. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are increasingly
tied by trade and investment with China … as is Pakistan and India.
Equally important new regional networks which exclude the US are
growing in Latin America and Asia, creating the potential for new
economic blocs.
In other words the US imperial economic network constructed after
World War II and amplified by the collapse of the USSR is in the
process of decay, even as the military bases and treaties remain as a
formidable 'platform' for new military interventions.
What is clear is that the military, political and ideological gains in
network-building by the US around the world with the collapse of the
USSR and the post-Soviet wars are not sustainable. On the contrary the
overdevelopment of the ideological-military-security apparatus raised
economic expectations and depleted economic resources resulting in the
incapacity to exploit economic opportunities or consolidate economic
networks. US funded "popular uprisings" in the Ukraine led to client
regimes incapable of promoting growth. In the case of Georgia, the
regime engaged in an adventurous war with Russia resulting in trade
and territorial losses. It is a matter of time before existing client
regimes in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Mexico
will face major upheavals, due to the precarious bases of rule by
corrupt, stagnant and repressive rulers.
The process of decay of the US Empire is both cause and consequence of
the challenge by rising economic powers establishing alternative
centers of growth and development. Changes within countries at the
periphery of the empire and growing indebtedness and trade deficits at
the 'center' of the empire are eroding the empire. The existing US
governing class, in both its financial and militarist variants show
neither will nor interest in confronting the causes of decay. Instead
each mutually supports the other: the financial sector lowers taxes
deepening the public debt and plunders the treasury. The military
caste drains the treasury in pursuit of wars and military outposts and
increases the trade deficit by undermining commercial and investment
undertakings.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22601
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