american global government: will it work? - peter gowan

7/29/2019 American Global Government: Will It Work? - Peter Gowan

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The government of the world that America has a

future?

Peter GOWAN

translated from English by

Franoise Armengaud, Fabrice Bensimon and Nanon Gardin *

Current Marx 2002, n.31 (gennaio-june)

The United States is not only the most powerful state in the world today,

they dominate the system of relations between states.Essentially, the

"global governance" exists only insofar as the U.S. government wants or

permits.Of course, international agencies make many decisionscollectively, often without that U.S. officials do not intervene

strongly.But they do so only according to the pleasure of

Washington.The United States call the shots (1).

My question is whether it is likely that this arrangement works, not in

the sense of whether it will solve the major problems of the planet, but

much more limited in the sense of its practical viability in the medium

term.

In short, my answer is that the government of the world by the United

States is not based on secure foundations, and is already in decline

because it lacks the proper tools to maintain its supremacy in the

conditions of post-Cold War era.If the current Bush administration does

not opt for drastic action to reassert its political domination, the model

that prevailed during the last decade continue.This is a model based on

dazzling demonstrations regarding political initiative from the United

States, all other major powers who joined them, before the U.S. State

consolidates local triumphs strengthening basic Structural its world

power.In response to changing that results, other social and political

forces make connections detrimental to global supremacy of the United

States.

The Marxist political analysis

In exploring this theme, I'll try to be what I think the Marxist political

analysis of international relations.Isaac Deutscher was, of course, a

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great master of the international political analysis.But it really worked

in another historical period the last phase of the world communist

movement.It was a time when there was a cosmopolitan movement

with supporters in all countries of the world: a social movement and

political significance, to reform the world, for a secular human

development project that would unite humanity.Nothing better

expresses what has disappeared with the collapse of this movement that

a character like Osama bin Laden.Here, we see people who find

expression in a character whose social base is composed of pre-

capitalist social structures located in payys like Saudi Arabia,

Afghanistan and Pakistan, and whose message is a form weird

conservative revolution against the modern world.In summary, there is

currently no international political force with a positive vision of a world

beyond capitalism.The movement against capitalist globalization is

interesting and is, potentially, important sign of something new.But it

remains a highly defensive movement of protest against what

happened, rather than questioning positive policy, to a world order of a

different type.

So here's how I see the context of any Marxist analysis of the

international political situation: we are in a phase where there is no real

political movement of emancipation participation that challenges the

core capitalist states by an alternative program positive which is visible

to the great mass of humanity.So, it radically alters the concerns and

efforts of the major capitalist states.

However, at the same time, it would be a grave mistake for us to

imagine that political protest by anti-capitalist forces has disappeared

from the horizon.The disarray of the left and changes of social power

against the labor movement in many parts of the world did not end the

possibility of further challenged by the labor movement during the next

decade.I would say that the probable increase in conflicts between

capitalist states and the essential contradictions of the new model of

capitalism for the semi-peripheral countries may well open new

perspectives for a new left.

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I.Future prospects of contemporary capitalismMany people, especially on the left, see the new international context

marked by the extraordinary dominance of the United States.And they

also believe that it is marked by a grand unification of forces of the

capitalist world led by the United States.

Global capitalism or more?

Both the left and right, we share the widespread view according to

which capitalism is, in a sense, unified internationally in the 1990s,

while outside the scope of the nation state (2).Thus, by "becoming

global" capitalism has finally solved the contradiction there was to be

both national and transnational: he became, in the words of Robert Cox,

a "nebulous" world in which all Western states are creatures.Or, in the

words of Kees Van der Pijl (although not necessarily according to its

analysis), we now have a "transnational ruling class" (3).

According to this view, it is conceivable that the activities of the U.S.

government are not only guided by the motivations and objectives

purely American, but by those of a class or a transnational capitalist

system.

Even within the European Union (EU) and the Euro zone, it is still not

possible to speak of a single European capitalism.An indication of the

persistence of national capitalisms in CPUE is that member states retain

control of a wide range of instruments always very critical in shaping the

strategic capital accumulation.The legal and institutional structure of

financial systems, business law, taxation, export policy, policies on

capital flows, most of the funding of Research and Development and the

ability to use the huge markets and state budgets to influence patterns

of accumulation: these instruments are still in the hands of member

states.European capitalisms now consult widely in their relations with

the other two centers, vis--vis the East and toward their own working

class.But vis--vis each other, they have no "disarmed" the political and

institutional (6).

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The contradiction between the national and

the transnational operates always

Thus, the emphasis of the work of many analysts today on the

"necessity" of global markets with global rules is correct.But this is thecase for a long time and it is only partially correct.Another truth is the

need for each capitalism centered on an area to protect against all kinds

of potential threats that other centers account for its own models and

strategies of transnational capital accumulation.Thus the center of

capitalism remains torn between the "need" to cooperate on

transnational and international and of engaging in rivalries between

capitalist areas.Such rivalries can be mitigated in certain circumstances,

and exacerbated in others.They can frequently be reduced by policiesthat vent problems from the center towards the periphery.But as it

stands, they are far from dead.

The liberal ideology of the 1990s, of course, presented as having these

rivalries disappeared.It wants us to believe that the international

economy has now become a sports governed by clear rules and global

and therefore each company in the world economy is in competition with

other companies without national preference does not play.And this

imagery is reinforced by the increasing role played by multinationals in

different policy when they sit around a table as is the case in

organizations like the European Round Table (Round Table European) or

the Trans Atlantic Business Dialogue (Transatlantic Business

Dialogue).It seems that the rules of the global economy are set by

companies alone, without states intervening.

However, if you look closer, you realize that over the last twelve years,

real progress towards a set of rules of the global market trulydepoliticized were tenuous.The WTO is fragile and it hardly goes beyond

GATT and lack of clear principles and has a tendency to commercialism

and trade regulated, particularly through the ruse of anti-dumping

instruments and any a range of other non-tariff barriers.No agreement

has been possible on the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment),

and you can see clusters of multinational precisely as a process of

negotiation and horse trading between multinational national process

which substitutes a regime genuinely liberal in its principles and itsrules.In such bargaining, there may be important points of agreement

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on the periphery of the opening or dismantling of social rights.But we

are still far from clear rules of international competition between

companies, to a point where they could provide protection and support

from their respective states (or collective protection CPUE) (7).

This is a growing problem in circumstances where legislation, formal

public institutions, tax systems, and political regulation of companies,

are increasingly at the center of the accumu lation of capital, at the time

of "services" and information products.That shapes these rules and

institutions?Regardless of whether this agent, it can shape the rules of

international capital accumulation.Thus, global rules are increasingly

necessary, while the national nature of capitalism makes it very difficult

to agree on such rules.

It is precisely the willingness of different capitalist centers to expand the

scope of their accumulation models as widely as possible, and at the

same time the capacity of each center to handle the institutional and

social structures in favor of its own center which introduce power politics

in international relations capitalists.Each center is trying to use the

different instruments of political influence to extend the range of its own

capital and to protect its accumulation models by using his political

influence of institutional preference.Of course, none of this prohibits

major centers to negotiate reciprocal open their markets to benefit

mutually.Such negotiations have also resulted in many areas, not only

as very small and often temporary alliances between multinationals from

various special centers, but also in the form of wider agreements such

as the cycle Uruguay Round.But these agreements are still fragile and

typical thing, closely related to politics: they are based more on power

relations on the implementation of abstract liberal rules.This is seen

even in the event that these agreements were the deepest and widest:

within the European Union.

Towards an imperial resolution of this

contradiction?

The possibility exists in principle that states zones Non-capitalistic

American Center are hollowed out and converted to vector control of a

single capitalist, whose center is the United States.In their role of

supporting the safety and scope of their respective capitalist class,

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would replace one of the organizers of the discipline of the working

world of a junior political loyalty to the American Center.At the same

time, the state would acquire an American financial sovereignty of the

property relations within the Centre, its financial system acting as a

single center that would organize and reorganize as a single central

capitalism.

There are not evident in this direction within the United States and, in

many ways, the British state has become a sort of hollow satellite of

American capitalism.The metaphor for this type of development would

be "Wimbledonisation" Wimbledon is a tournament player without valid

British Columbia.This trend is evident in the case of the City of London,

which acts as an offshore financial center exerting considerable influencewithin the British state.But even in the case of England, the

"Wimbledonisation" has its limits, and they remain much higher in

continental Europe and the Pacific and Southeast Asia (8).

During the 1990s, the U.S. boom has acted as a centripetal force of

integration, allowing the United States and their companies have a

strong influence of "non-political" on the market rules, and the

domination of capital Americans in the field of finance and new

technologies that gave them an important influence on the international

rules governing these sectors.But these are precarious victories.The

ability of other capitalist states of the Centre to react defensively to such

pressure remains substantial.

II.Domination of the Centre by the United Statesin the political structure of the Cold War and the

illusory triumph of American soft power

thereafter

With hindsight, one can see that the international political system of the

Cold War was an immensely solid structure to ensure the political

dominance of the United States over the capitalist world and, in this

work to rule, as a set of mechanisms for protection and progression of

capital accumulation by the USA.

Confronted with the problem of communism after World War II, the

capitalist classes around the world have turned to the United States for

support and protection.The United States responded by security

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agreements with Western Europe, the Pacific and South East Asia and

other parts of the non-Communist world, establishing their bases in

these territories and military acting as guardians security of these

states.In return, these States are to adjust their economic systems to

meet U.S. economic interests and would also accept unilateral control of

the United States on the instruments of "global governance" of the

capitalist world (9).

The United States has not used this system to corporatist economic

interests, close to their own capitalists.They did not, for example, got

their hands on goods in Germany and Japan when these countries were

under their tenure on the contrary, they encouraged the survival of the

capitalist class that had dominated these same states during war.Theydid not simply swept the old European empires.

Undoubtedly, in the 1970s, American leaders had come to regret some

of the concessions that were made to other capitalisms in the postwar

period.Nevertheless, the political structure of the Cold War gave

Washington considerable political weight to defend its economic

interests.As shown by Robert Gilpin, the dependence of West Germany

vis-avis the U.S. military and political support in the 1960s was essential

for the United States may allow their companies to develop operations

in the Federal Republic to become a major force within the European

Economic Community (10).During the 1970s, American political

supremacy enabled her to abandon the Bretton Woods system and

impose direct rule of the dollar on the global economy, while managing

the dollar as part of a policy only to defend the national interest of the

United States.And in the late 1970s, faced with the strengthening of

dangerous economic and political relations between Germany and the

USSR, the decision of the United States, through NATO, to deploy

Pershing missiles in the FRG was able to reach abrupt breakdown of

these links between the FRG and the USSR.

The political structure of the Cold War was less successful as a tool

against Japan in the 1980s, partly because of the new relationship

established in the 1970s between the U.S. and China.But it allowed the

Reagan administration to switch to a new aggressive marketing policy,

attacking vigorously in Japan and Southeast Asia, without any relationto the principles of GATT. "And the will of the Reagan administration to

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end capital controls and liberalize financial markets was, as we have

seen, fully legitimized by the anti-collectivist rhetoric that accorded with

the anticommunism of the Cold War.

We can identify three features of this political structure of the Cold

War.First there was the fact that the elites of Western European states

and Japan were directly dependent on im Rican decisions about the use

of military power on which they had no control: the United States could

take military initiatives against the Soviet Union or against enemies in

the Middle East or elsewhere, initiatives with implications for the

security of allies could be important if not vital, but these allies might

not even be informed in advance.It was a way the military capacity of

the United States could exert political influence over other deep generalcapitalist states.

A second feature of the political structure of the Cold War was that the

political supremacy of the United States was deeply rooted in

populations of the countries allied with the penetration of anti

communism in their national political institutions.Brzezinski has aptly

compared the anti-political culture in a quasi-religious belief(1 2).U.S.

governments were thus able to mobilize both their people and people

from the rest of the Centre so united in declaring a state of emergency

against Communism on different occasions during the Cold War.Military

action and U.S. unilateral policies and measures were, at the popular

level, a strong legitimacy in the mass political culture of

anticommunism.

And a third feature of this structure was the way politics between states

within the Centre was institutionalized.Political relations, security

relations between the U.S. and each of their subordinate allies weremainly organized on a bilateral relationship in a satellite

center.European states, for example, do not combine in a European

committee to determine a common line in international politics before

negotiating with U.S. officials.And at the same time, disagreements on

political issues between the allies and the United States should be run as

a family through opaque institutions security agreements.In public,

solidarity and harmony should be the rule.

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This system was so well suited to the United States that successive

governments did not feel the need to establish strong institutions and

extended to the entire Center to manage the political economy of

international policy in a way that ensures U.S. leadership .The IMF was

relegated to a secondary role, mainly focused on economic management

policies of the South in the 1970s.The organization that emerged with

the task of coordinating and harmonizing public policies in the major

capitalist countries - the OECD - has always remained a center of

discussion rather than a political body authoritative.And the G7,

developed in the 1970s, isnever become a strong political organization

and recognized.The United States have clearly used to implement the

policies they had already decided unilaterally on some occasions and not

give him little real collegiality otherwise.Within the structure of the ColdWar, the U.S. had little need to exert their will on the international

political economy, to develop institutional structures and have an

authority ..Ad hocarrangements to achieve their goals appeared to be

sufficient.

The defeat of the Soviet bloc and the virtual

triumph of American capitalism

The collapse of the Soviet bloc and the USSR was accompanied by an

extraordinary wave of enthusiasm for transnational what could be

described as the American model of "new capitalism calf", championed

by the Reagan administration, supported by the Thatcher government in

Britain and thematized in the 1990s as the "economic globalization".The

campaign against the Soviet bloc during the "Cold War" was also a

campaign for the new capitalist world capitalism.This campaign featured

communism just as the worst and most extreme of a range of

collectivism that rejected the free market "capitalism", through a variety

of tatismes ranging from social democracy to the European to the

statism of the South seeking to expand, through the "crony capitalism"

statist in Southeast Asia.At the same time, we showed progress as the

dismantling of labor law, privatization of industries and public services,

the liberalization of national financial systems and, especially, the lifting

of controls on the free movement of lafinance.In short, we advocated

the internationalization of changes already made at national level in the

Anglo-American world.

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This program policy to Reagan fostered a transnational social movement

with as much energy and considerable momentum (13).The most

enthusiastic social groups were ca pitalistes Centre which naturally saw

this as a package of new property rights that had been deleted after the

Second World War and offered them now.But this movement appealed

to the imagination of wider layers, which saw financial liberalization

above all as the harbinger of a new modernization model born in the

United States.We saw the considerable movement of speculative capital

as signs of a new capitalist dynamism.It was felt that financial crises

caused by the new capitalism were caused by resistance to the new

statist capitalism.Financialisation and were perceived as being somehow

related to a technological revolution that produce new engines of growth

for the economies in new technologies and telecommunications.

This program was adopted in the Reagan not only from the right in

Europe, but by social democratic parties and groups of the

nomenklatura in the former Soviet bloc.It has also spread to Latin

America and parts of Asia.And this social movement was further

encouraged when the U.S. boom of the 1990s and the stagnation of

Japan and Europe were evident.The mistaken belief that the 1980

American supremacy was something of the past was replaced by the

equally erroneous belief that the new American model of financial

capitalism was to inaugurate a new era of U.S. dominance in the

twenty-first century.

In the late 1990s, this reading of the collapse of the Soviet bloc as the

corollary of the triumph of the new capitalism was losing its influence in

large parts of the world.You could see more and more uphill sudden

speculative flows as symptoms of economic instability caused by the

volatility of the international monetary system crazy.The neo-liberal

form of capitalism turned out to be a formula for the enrichment of all

small groups, at the cost of social and economic disruption for large

groups or even whole societies.You could see more and more "economic

globalization" as a war machine for the expansion of American

capitalism, rather than a new model of international growth.And even

the U.S., the new finance-capitalist model generated a dangerous

speculative bubble in caeur economic boom.The end of the boom in

2001, accompanied by bankruptcies in the "new growth areas," seemed

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destined to mark the end of transnational social movement that hailed

the dawn of a new epoch of capitalist dynamism.

III.The Eurasian regionalist challenge to globalgovernment of the United States and theirgeopolitical strategies during the last decade

Since the early 1990s witnessed the emergence of significant new

challenges in the global domination of the United States at both ends of

Eurasia.And the American state had to face these new challenges

without the benefit of using solid political structures of the Cold War.In

fact, these challenges are closely associated with the collapse of political

structures themselves.Moreover, the instruments of the state apparatus

of the United States are, in many ways, those inherited from fifty years

of Cold War.

The new challenges

First, there is the growing trend of political regionalism in Western

Europe, and simultaneous efforts to bring up in international relations a

political identity

European collective.Second, the shift of China and the former USSR,

especially Russia, to capitalism, which raises the question of whether the

U.S. can master these capitalisms to ensure the predominance of their

relationship with American capitalism, rather than Russian ties with

Germany and Western Europe, as well as links between China and the

Pacific Rim.

Such challenges have, of course, no official existence.The official

discourse merely suggests that capitalism simply for economic units,

regardless of nationality, who comply with international law of the

contract as made by the GATT and other WTO institutions.Thus the

challenges involved in cornering Chinese and Russian capitalism are

reduced mainly to Russia and China, to put their economic policies in

line with these market rules of the WTO.When this will happen, they will

be allowed into the institutions of the global economy, and it is the most

efficient producers out of any consideration of nationality, who will

triumph in the field.

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But this official stance is far from consider issues of power related to the

contemporary international political economy.These struggles involve

West West for obtaining access to private markets gives a central role

newly emerging, and in these battles, the GATT rules have little or no

impact.During the 1990s, the West has bent over backwards to enter

the rapidly expanding capitalism in East Asia and South East, including

China, and also to gain advantages in the former Soviet Union.The

processes by which the China of yesterday or today's Russia are trying

to enter the WTO lead to rivalry and competition between the highly

politicized Western powers about the conditions specific to assign to

Chinese penetration .And apparatus of the WTO itself provides a wide

range of cases and decisions, which determine in fact models of the

network of international links which fits the Chinese economy.

The United States have instruments ofsoftpower - control of access to

their markets and the IMF and WB, which are in themselves inadequate

to settle these problems (14).Dependence with respect to the Chinese

market for U.S. production is balanced by the urgent need for American

capital for rapid insertion and vigorous in the U.S. market.And strong

sales in China have given the U.S. a significant stranglehold on this

country.Similarly, the important role played by Russia on international

energy markets gave only a weak influence on the IMF and the WB on

the Russian economy, and one of the decisive tasks of Washington in

1990s was to get a grip on debt by the Russian state by injecting the

IMF money.

We should not minimize either the fact that following the collapse of

their political structures related to the Cold War, the United States found

themselves deprived of any effective argument (softpower)on the

political economies of two areas-belts.Washington had to quickly

establish new institutional links with the countries of the European Union

and we had to face obvious difficulties in efforts to put pressure on the

Japanese government to accept that these sorts of trade agreements

that Congress deemed necessary.

Thus in the 1990s, the U.S. had to try to use their military-political

capacity to forge political relationships both in the two areas-the-belt in

Western Europe and the belt Pacific - and between these zones andbelts of Russia and China.But this company to use its military

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capabilities for such remodeling has been a particularly difficult problem

to solve for the United States in Europe during the 1990s, since the

collapse of the Soviet bloc had destroyed the military-political structures

clean the Cold War, which gave the U.S. military power his remarkable

political efficacy.The emerging political power of China, its influence in

East Asia, and its search for new political and economic links with East

Asia and South East, have formed more and challenges most obvious for

the military-political position of the United States in this region in the

late 1990s.

The main policy objectives of successive U.S. governments in the 1990s

focused on issues of reorganizing the system of military-political

influence tico to ensu effective political domination over Eurasia, and, bylmme, the dominance of American capitalism in the next century.

Of course, with the end of the USSR, the United States military forces

have become absolutely paramount.As many have noted, the U.S.

could deal successfully with any other coalition of the largest military

powers.This dominance has led to a military audience triumphalism

evident among the realists in the academic establishment of American

international relations: this perspective has been - well by Wolforth,

Brzezinski and others.Kenneth Waltz, the great elder of neo-realistic,

and the like, are skeptical that this should continue.They think that

other powers will reset and change the balance to the detriment of the

U.S. It.However, apart from the Chinese defensive rearmament, Waltz's

prediction did not materialize.

Military power on the United States today makes clear that it would be

folly for any major power to seek to challenge the United States as a

global military power.But this fact does not provide any response toother critical policy issues facing the world after the Cold War, for

example, American military power can it prevent Western Europe to

unite and form a power in world politics?American military power can it

provide a unified Western Europe will not establish political links and

economic ties with Russia on track towards a form of liberal democratic

capitalism?The American military power - not to mention the soft

powerthey have - can it ensure that Pacific Rim did not regionalized,

and become a regional political economy at least partiallyprotected?And what happens if, within a decade or two in the new

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century, Western Europe closely associated with Russia and Pacific Rim

closely associated with China began to join forces in joint campaigns for

the reconfiguration of international economic policy: U.S. military power

can she successfully tackle this kind of challenge to the dominance of

the dollar and the institutions of American softpower?

As I tried to show inThe Global Gamble,the main political challenges

have dealt successive U.S. administrations since the early 1990s

revolved around the new Eurasian issues, particularly around looking for

an effective mentoring policy of "allies" of Western Europe and East

Asia.

To rephrase these intertwined challenges, we can say that this was

nothing less than the transformation and reorganization of Eurasia: a

huge change of scenery geo-social, geo political and geo-economic, of

Eurasia.This is what became clear in the eyes of governments and

intellectuals Americans.Yet this has not been central to the perception

of U.S. policy in most Western European views.

The picture in Britain of American political activity, for example, was

largely that of a satisfied power, ruling over a world that had not

changed much and behaving as if it was the usual routine: in other

words, acting reactively to special cases, with discrete small chips here

and there.

Such an image is completely false.All U.S. administrations since Bush

senior had vividly aware of their "presence in the (re-) creation": their

focus is, in other words, consists of strategic and programmatic issues

regarding the fundamental construction of a new international order and

a new international economy.Interconnected areas and critical areas

are: Western Europe, Central Europe and Russia, and Japan, the Pacific

Rim and China.Caspian and Black Sea are also of great strategic

importance.

We will now focus our attention on some issues where U.S. global

dominance is tested.

1.European transformations.

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2.Relations between Europe and Russia, and the role of

Russia.

3.China, Japan and East Asia.

4.The Middle East.

European Transformations

The Reagan administration had achieved remarkable success in the

1980s by persuading the states of Western Europe to respond to the

general crisis of Atlantic economies by an orientation towards neo-

liberalism.But the states of Western Europe had decided to plan this

direction, particularly with regard to its consequences in terms of rising

unemployment and marginalization that `significant minorities, by

exploiting European integration , that is to say, using the very idea of

European unity - a powerful idea for the European left as a vehicle of

neo-liberalism (while presenting neoliberalism as a unifying factor for

the Europe).

This form of European orientation was in complete contrast to the neo-

liberal British government under Thatcher.Here, neo-liberalism was agenuine and serious business to transform the social basis of the state

through an open confrontation with the British labor movement and its

complete political defeat.On the other hand, in continental Europe, neo-

liberalism was intended from the pro-European co-optation of the labor

movement and a gradualist strategy, under the sign of the construction

of European unity.It was to prove fragile, full of ambiguities and

evasions, above all the subterfuge of using a middle ground for

European unity as a means to neo-liberalism, while simultaneously

having this operation as its opposite : neo-liberalism as a means for a

democratic federal Europe.

The result was both the continuation of resistance to the neo-liberal

from the world of work in France, Italy, Germany and elsewhere, and an

increasingly popular legitimation lante luck of the European Union as a

political , since this framework, in fact, was not at all transformed into a

democratic federation.Therefore, in order to stay the course of the

deployment neoliberal Europeanist, the executive powers of the West

European states have begun increasingly to give the EU a new identity

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as an international organization ca agne for liberal rights of international

and even glo, "democracy" and development and a host of other causes

that attract the forces of left and center of Christian Democracy in

Europe in areas that do not the crucial issue of neoliberal social relations

of production: ecology, gender issues, issues related to children, racism,

and an ever increasing human rights and development aid.The fragile

coalition in favor of neo-liberalism was also supported by a strong

protectionism and mercantilism willing not only to serve the interests of

capitalism in Western Europe, but also to protect workers from the

European Union in the industry competitive against imports from East

Asia or Europe Central and Eastern Europe and the countries situated

more or less at the periphery.At the same time, the modus operandiof

the European Union dialogue, diplomacy prepared to produce diets

based on processed both within the EU itself and in its international

economic diplomacy, began to merge with its new political identity left

liberal.States of the European Union began to seek to promote new

areas of international L gislation of all kinds, from human rights to

ecology, gender issues, etc..(16).

This effort to combine neoliberalism with the preservation of various

class alliances in each country, between the capital, the workaday world

and the intelligentsia of the left in Europe, through a new Europeanism,

has created a source growing transatlantic tensions.Seen from the

perspective of the new Europeanism, the U.S. militarists appear guilty of

violations of the liberal principle, and, more generally, rather troopers

against international legal standards or any standards.

And with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the new Europeanism was

combined with the interests and geopolitical strategies of the major

states of Western Europe, particularly Germany and France.German

unification in the context of a Soviet Union still in place inaugurated a

period of intense exercises for all major Western powers between late

1989 and late 1991.This critical period emerged two cardinal political

agenda in Germany: First tighten closer ties of Germany's neighbors

with her, and it with them.Since the end of the Cold War, could no

longer be content to do so only in terms of economic regionalism: it

should be made in politics.But that could lead to a true federationit was

therefore either a block or a European political dialogue, supporting theEurozone.Secondly, Germany was determined to attract the belt states

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borders of Central Europe and Eastern Europe - states bordering

Germany and Austria - firmly in close relationships, safe , friendly and

cooperative ties with Germany, so they can play a protective role

against all key German interests.But such an operation should be

conducted within the framework of the European Union, not just

bilaterally.

At the same time, both countries were determined to achieve more

strongly assert the interests of Europe within the Atlantic Alliance, and

to confer a greater international profile in the European Union and

Europeanism policy .Their geopolitical perfectly consistent with the

policy of what we have called the new Europeanism.

Despite the rhetoric French, French-German these guidelines were not

at all year to face the American leadership on "the West".And indeed

they came into conflict with the strong determination of the Bush

administration to maintain the essential elements of American political

control of European international politics, control the United States had

exercised during the Cold War.

This shows that Western Europe has presented two faces to American

capitalism and the American state in the last two decades: on the one

hand, more than any other part of the world, it has adapted its social

relations and its state forms as a function of the overall American.More

than any other part of the world, it opened at the entrance of American

capital in the labor market and production market and later in its

financial markets.Now part of the European Community is very

favorable for U.S. companies producing even within this Community.Yet

at the same time, the states of Western Europe are much closer to a

kind of concerted coordination of capitalism, as a form of regionalintegration increasingly politicized.The United States thus faced a

Europe rgionalisait and, simultaneously, was in sympathy with the neo-

liberal global, and the United States launched a European political

challenge implicit in the political values and political influence

international civil.

American administrations that have succeeded during the 1990s had an

essentially bipartisan approach their European problem.Their main

objectives were three in number

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1.The first was to maintain the separation in terms militaropolitique

between the major states of Western Europe, each remaining stuck in

the center formed by Washington as the radius of a wheel to the hub.It

was the old system of NATO: the Western Europeans were not allowed

to sit as a group to coordinate their institutionalized political-military

approach without Washington, then to share it collectively.There should

be no military-political center of Western Europe independent (17)

2.The second objective, together with the previous, was able to block

any Western European and collective self that reveals itself in the

direction of Eastern (or Mediterranean), and prohibit all displays ment of

a sphere of influence west -European from Germany to Russia.Through

NATO, the United States were able to control any extension of power tothe East, and somehow they played the role of border guards between

Russia and the states of the European Union, now Russia out of

institutional apparatuses European military-political.

3.Push States of Western Europe towards a resolute break - rather than

against-heart - with the old alliance between capital and labor by

introducing a labor market American-style minimalism of well-being of

American style etc.., introduction to which successive U.S.

administrations could rely on its British ally, either Major or Blair.As in

English, such an effort to address the labor rights in Europe should have

been done under the banner of a more harsh than the centrist

Europeanism, and highlighted the banner - a right-wing nationalism, as

in English - would undermine the coherence of the European bloc.

These three objectives can be reduced to a single goal: to preserve the

hegemony of U.S. control of the military-political order of Europe, in

other words, a system of gears tightened applied to all significant issuesof policy European and political relations of Europe with Russia and the

Middle East.In short, it was to extend American hegemony over] Europe

as they were carried during the Cold War.

Thus in 1990 from France and Germany found themselves engaged in

confrontations with the United States.These confrontations were not

performed openly and therefore did not involve anything that could

mobilize the masses to give their support to these various struggles.On

the contrary, these struggles were practiced behind closed doors within

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NATO, EU and other institutions, and they were led through specific

actions and attempts to "facts" in the military-political field and in the

diplomatic field.But these were real struggles, and sometimes very

intense.This was particularly the case for and against manceuvres-

manceuvres in the Western Balkans.The Bosnian war broke out and

continued largely as a by-product of these struggles West-West.The

war between Serbia and NATO was first and foremost an American

maneuver conducted within these struggles.And the English State,

party to these conflicts sharply as a staunch pro-American, ended in the

long run much closer to France and Germany.This shift in English, led

by Blair in 1998, was largely the result of shock caused by the brutal

contempt shown by the Americans and British European security in the

Western Balkans, a contempt which was sometimes hair stand on end.

This is how a European bloc has emerged gradually, despite the fierce

hostility of the United States.The place was the emergence of this Pact

European Defence and Security (ESDP) (18).It's not a very solid block,

and it is far from being provided with means for effective and evident to

develop and consolidate the practice: it merely makes the development

of institutions.

But on the other hand, the U.S. has managed to control the military-

political aspects of western expansion in the former Soviet bloc, they

have been customers for security policy between Germany and Russia

(Poland in the lead), and they managed to exclude Russia from

institutions hosting debates and European political-military

decisions.They gained a position gardesfrontires between Russia and

Western Europe.As for the French efforts to ensure some coordination

of the Mediterranean world in the framework of NATO, the Clinton

administration reacted to them with a brutality diplomatic particularly

aggressive, deforming the French proposal, the better to trample.

So that the result of efforts undertaken by the United States to reshape

the politics of Western Europe to maintain its effective control over the

region under the conditions of the post-Cold War, is mixed, and this is

potentially one of failure regarding the key point to prevent the

emergence of a large block of West European politics.

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Relations between the U.S. and Russia

For the U.S. government in the 1990s, the difficulty was to keep both

separated from Western Europe and Russia, and at the same time to

remain the dominant influence on either side of the sepa ration.The

effort to become the dominant influence in Russia has experienced

outstanding results for a large part of the 1990s with the original policy

conducted by the Clinton administration, that of a strategic partnership

with the reform movement in Russia .While Bonn became a central

partner of the Soviet government of Gorbachev, Washington quickly

became the main partner of the Yeltsin team, pushing for confrontation

with the Russian Parliament in 1993 and working closely with him to

undermine and overthrow the powerful Russian Communist Party.Aspart of this political alliance, the U.S. Treasury established very close

ties with Chubais clan, flooding it informally billion, and working with

him nothing less than to reshape social relations specific to the

economic Russian and building the new social oligarchy of Russian

capitalism, in a narrow umbilical relationship with American capitalism

(19).The device macroeconomic entire Russian economy was

subordinated to and through this project, until the collapse of the ruble

in 1998.The new social oligarchy seized much of the productive assets

of the Russian economy, putting their wealth plundered, and benefiting

from the high value of the ruble and the freedom of financial flows to

circulate values of tens of billions of dollars to London and New York.At

the same time, the association Chubais-United States ensured that the

Russian government was paralyzed by a rapidly growing debt which

absorbed a large part of the total budget in 1998.All this combined with

the success of the Clinton administration to get the Yeltsin government's

acceptance of NATO expansion to Poland in 1997, and to pursue an anti-

Russian course in this instance - a success remarkable political.

Yet the Clinton administration proved incapable of carrying through this

extraordinary project.Rapidly worldwide financial panic of 1998, the

U.S. government was unable to prevent both the expensive collapse of

the ruble as the denunciation of government debt by the Russian

government.And very quickly the team Yeltsin and Chubais clan found

themselves increasingly isolated politically, while the small number of

emerging middle class, economically fragile pro-Western, had to faceeconomic losses traumatic.

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The war waged by NATO against Yugoslavia in 1999 produced at the

time a powerful and profound reversal of all elements of Russian public

opinion against the United States.Ment even more seri, this led to the

replacement of Yeltsin by Putin and by a shift in any political orientation

of the Russian state, along the lines of the construction of an

autonomous Russian capitalism and a revitalized Russian State .

Upon the arrival of George W.Bush at the White House, American

geopolitical efforts towards the Western Europe and Russia could hardly

be presented as success.The two models that seemed to impose a new

system of international politics in the region proved both

ineffective.One was the old model of the Cold War, the United States

taking the lead of a divided Europe against Russia.The other would putthe U.S. position of "power neutral" between two mutually hostile

entities: one Russian and one in Western Europe eastward

expansion.Yet U.S. efforts have led to Western Europe tend to unite,

while Russian policy became more and more strongly anti-American and

began seeking closer ties with Western Europe , an approach warmly

welcomed by the reciprocal of the part of some in Western Europe,

particularly Germany.

But the states of Western Europe continued to want to build their

influence in international politics as a block.That's what they did in

building their political diplomacy purely civil, and developing a mordant

some against the United States.They replace the kind of political power

by treaty regimes based on rules, and on a global scale, they emphasize

the peaceful resolution of conflicts, they insist to demand systems based

on the rules inherent in human rights etc..They also call for a more

collegial form of world government in which the U.S. could unilaterally

decide all major issues.There were even indications of the interest of

Europe towards an association with the states of East Asia against

Washington, about some important issues, something that caused great

trouble to the latter.

So there in Western Europe a real movement, but still fragile and not

very focused on the European Union, for cons-balance policy hegemonic

power of the United States.It could be described as a subversive way to

take the train.States of the European Union are striving always to avoida confrontation face to face with the United States whenever it might

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initiate a conflict: they want to stay together while trolling, but at the

same time they seek to highlight and affirm later points that

differentiate them, and they apply also to respond to U.S. initiatives by

measures to strengthen European cohesion.

In 2001, political elites in Washington viewed these developments with a

truly hostile eye.The Bush administration was determined to obtain the

return of the states of Western Europe to a subordinate position, and to

break the fragile existing block on the military and political.

The theater of the East Asian

While the year 1990 opened on the panic that seized the U.S.

government and business circles with the dynamism of Japanese growth

and positioning of increasingly assertive in international political

economy, the Japanese challenge directly vanishes with the onset of

breakup, and a long period of stagnation settled.The Clinton

administration then found himself facing three major problems in the

region: the continued dynamic growth in East Asia and South East with

relatively closed financial systems and economic policies adjusted

growth quick profit, the rise of China and its opening, and the increasing

regionalization patterns of accumulation in the region, a regionalization

which some currents within Japan and other parts of the area wanted to

give form institutional.

The Clinton administration encountered great difficulties in its policy

towards China, seeking a first position in more confrontation with both

China and North Korea, and then backtracking to the resistance and

regional to pressure from American business community involved in the

fight to obtain the Chinese market.But the East Asian crisis to the U.S.

Treasury gave the opportunity to make a decisive breach opening the

Korean economic policy and economic assets to the Korean

American penetration, as well as progress in its efforts to open a route

to Japan.

These operations were associatedline with a long-term U.S. policy, of

acting as a "power neutral" overlooking the ancient political antagonisms

between China, Japan and South Korea.But the U.S. Treasury

operations during the 1997 crisis, although managing to cope with the

Japanese countryside during the crisis to provide a regional solution,

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shocked the elites of the region and thus formed the basis of a more

sustained effort of from ASEAN, China and Japan to work more

aggressively to build an institutionalized regionalism.Taking steps to

financial assistance provided to regional states to deal with currency

crises or financial, constituted the first step in this direction.The second

step is the agreement for the establishment of a free trade area

including China and ASEAN and potentially extending to Japan and

South Korea.

This guidance makes clear how the old political antagonisms enter

themselves in conflict as and as always are forged more links in the

economic interests and the interests linked to political economy.

The principal came against the current capacity of the United States,

thanks to the global domination of the dollar, to manage huge trade

deficits and to absorb so large export flows from third nance of East Asia

East and Southeast.But the U.S. market declined rapidly with the onset

of the recession in the U.S., thus reinforcing the current

regionalist.While the strong rise of China creates tensions due to

competition with South Korea and even Japan, however there are some

very powerful interests throughout the region to institutionalize

regionalization.This would give the states in the region a powerful

argument vis--vis the United States to the extent that it provides some

control over market access and regional production which frees the

region of a direct dependence with respect IMF (and thus the U.S.

Treasury) in a crisis.And it would get great benefits for society in so far

as to allow about a more unified voice in international economic

diplomacy in the WTO and elsewhere.

In such circumstances, the Bush administration's policy of continuing ina role "power neutral" became out of context, while a stronger regional

cooperation threatened helplessness.The fear was evident, for example,

that the friendly policy of South Korea against North could lead to a

consensual approach to reunification involving China and Russia and

weakening American influence on this critical issue of regional policy.

Thus, with the arrival of the Bush administration in Washington, the

stage was set for an American movement actively working to rebuild the

international political system in the Asia Pacific.The Bush administration

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has planned a change of direction, leaving his position as "neutral

power" and up to a position whose motto is "contain China" American

military power would then be deployed to generate a voltage with China

and other powers to enlist in the region behind the U.S., thus achieving

a bipolar structure.This would allow the U.S. to block the emergence of

a political-economic regional bloc including China and Japan, as well as

guide policy and regional economies in a more strongly pro-American

interests.

But under conditions where the Chinese economy continues to grow and

offer extensive market openings to foreign capital, a policy to "contain"

China can very easily lead to a re turn of the handle.The ability of the

United States to provide political models, and therefore models ofaccumulation in the region, and is very far from assured.And there's yet

another danger: that of political convergence between the U.S. and the

countries of East and Southeast Asia, a number of issues of global

political economy, and even on political issues in the region.This danger

was prompted by the surprising approach of the United States for the

South Korean friendly policy vis--vis the North, and in direct opposition

to the line from Washington in early 2001.

The Middle East

The Middle East is another area where the U.S. government has

deployed its combination, characteristic of the post-Cold War, tactical

dynamism and laissez-faire.

The political underpinnings of U.S. positions in the Middle East since the

collapse of Soviet influence has been to manipulate the inveterate

political conflicts within the region.Maintaining and supporting the

Israeli power, they have made Israel a threat to other Arab states and

were able to maintain a security relationship with Egypt.At the same

time they were able to present themselves as the indispensable

"mediators" between Israel and the Arab world regarding the occupation

of Palestine.In the 1990s, they expanded the role of mediator in

relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority regarding the

occupied territories.And the U.S. have also played a role as protectors

against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries to the threats to these

States by Iran and Iraq.

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But after the triumph of the Gulf War and after the compromise

ultimately unsustainable between Israel and Arafat establishing the

alleged Palestinian Authority, the positions of the United States in the

region enjoyed a long period of drift.Washington allowed the Saudis, as

compensation to the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, to develop

a stronger international political Islamist, whose consequences are

visible with the rise of Al Qaeda.

The Gulf War was itself followed by a siege war more barbaric against

Iraq, killing over a million Iraqis as UN agencies, a policy per ceived

more and more outrageous as the Arab world and the Islamic world.In

addition, the eruption of the second Palestinian intifada ended the

mediating role of the United States.She has brought to light theemptiness and unsustainability of the Oslo and Camp David, while the

Israeli repression generated strong pressures in Saudi Arabia and Egypt

so that governments show any influence on the crisis.Washington

refused to come to the aid of these governments with respect to this

matter: they retaliated by blocking U.S. efforts to renew their policy

with regard to Iraq.The policy itself, in 2001, was completely routed,

Syria and other states to help Iraq to break the blockade, the U.S. is

politically powerless before the expulsion from Iraq of UN weapons

inspectors responsible for investigating the weapons, the U.S. and

Britain failing to develop a new policy accepted by the Security Council

United Nations.September 11, U.S. policy in the region was adrift, and

almost completely isolated internationally.

IV.The role of the United States as a globalmanager

If the geopolitical manceuvres United States in Europe and Eastern Asiarise to varying degrees of concern and even hostility of their "allies"

transnational political agenda and interna tional - relating to The most

important points of what might be called the Government overall -

remains largely alien to these questions.We will discuss about it two

particularly important areas

1.The overall macroeconomic management;

2.Management issues in the South.

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The overall macroeconomic management

Despite the rhetoric regarding the existence of a new global capitalism

and the emergence of institutions of "global governance", the results of

this "global governance" in the 1990 borders on chaos.And despite the

claims of U.S. officials to assert global leadership of the United States,

behavior management overall has failed to say the least dignity.Whole

story boils down to politicians intense rivalry between the capitalist

states of the Center on major issues of global political economy.We

witnessed the tensions that have continued to emerge in the WTO, the

failure of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and other themes

related to economic issues such as agreement Kyoto on the

environment.All these tensions have emerged as the triad would haveany advantage to present a united front to voters within the capitalist

states of the Centre as to countries and peoples of the South.

But these tensions have also arisen in the area of macroeconomic

management overall.While the central banks of Europe cooperate daily

with those of the United States and Japan to manage the international

financial situation, and these links persist despite the rivalry between

the capitalist powers of the Centre.But there is no consensus among

them, whether the operation of the international monetary system or

the regulation of international financial flows.The United States argued

strongly their right to act unilaterally in their policy of supporting the

dollar and exchange rates among major currencies, and have used their

powers to abuse the exchange rate.Despite the threat imposed on

systemic financial stability following the crisis in the countries of East

Asia, the U.S. Treasury continues to oppose any attempt to make it less

volatile international flows of hot money.The IMF, he resolutely

reinforced this by behaving, in fact, as a kind of insurance for free public

financial speculators North arbitrating at will the hot money.

It could have envisaged a situation where these two problems would

have been taken into account simultaneously, and where the dollar's

dominance and the free movement of capital would have been

preserved.The dollar could remain the dominant world currency as a

unit of account and international trade while that the United States, the

ECB and the Japanese authorities stabilized the exchange rate, andsimilarly, the free movement of private capital could be maintained

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while the country vulnerable to a sharp increase in financial portfolios

could impose a substantial tax on financial flows in the short term.We

could have prevented the IMF to protect the hot money speculators

North by refusing to bail them out in crises and allowing governments

not to honor their obligations to the debt.But successive U.S.

governments have refused to take steps in this direction with the

exception of minor adjustments in the provisions of the IMF.

At present, the other G7 countries fail to agree on a new program

management of monetary and financial organizations.It would however

be possible

develop a common position on some of these issues closer to East Asia

and countries of the eurozone, as demonstrated in early 1999 the brief

attempt of finance ministers of the German and French exchange rates,

in agreement with the Japanese government.Cooperation in this field

would certainly much easier if Europe extended to the east and if a

monetary system emerged in East Asia.

Relations between capitalist states of Central

and South management

Today as yesterday, the Southern States have great difficulty in

confirming the authority of the state.Throughout the Cold War, the

military machine and the system of U.S. intelligence have been actively

involved in managing these problems in the South, including support for

dictatorships, through participation in revolutionary movements against-

and launching coups and military invasions.

Simultaneously, in the 1970s, the capitalist states of the Centre faced a

serious political problem in some developing countries: the

reorganization of international economic policy that would have

strengthened the role had South in the international division of

labor.This campaign for a new international economic order was

effectively extended to the 1980s by the way the Reagan administration

managed the issue of debt, divided the South and set up the structural

adjustment programs aimed at strengthen the social power of private

capital in the South while bringing groups of local capitalists to become

annuitants through the mechanism of free movement of capital that

allowed them to make capital out of their country and placed them in

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the financial centers of London and New York, and linking them to

American and British capitalism.Countries, especially East and

Southeast Asia, which managed to avoid the debt trap and the

destabilizing impact of DWSR (dollar-wall street plan) managed to keep

clear of community in the South and continued to develop until the late

1990s.

During the 1990s, the attitude of the United States towards the South

has hardly changed, except to take a more militant turn.The United

States continued to threaten to choke all the political forces that

threatened international economic policy in place.The method used was

similar to the seat of war: a combination of economic blockade

sometimes accompanied by bombing campaigns aimed at destroyingeconomic assets in the South and to terrorize and depleting their

populations.The United States, in this context, also attempted to

organize internal revolt to overthrow the governments fault.

Simultaneously, various U.S. administrations have continued to defend

the DWSR and allow the uncontrolled circulation of private capital

without taking into account that this process continues to include extra

dramatic financial crises that threaten to spread further, as shown in

recent Argentine crisis and the serious problems now facing another

flagship model of American politics: the Polish economy.

These policies have not benefited from support from other capitalist

states of the Centre.The Western European countries were initially

welcomed the crisis in East and South-East Asia in 1997 because it

allowed one to expect less competition from the region and also more

open of these countries to capital Atlantic, but they then interpreted the

crisis and its spread to the centers of capitalism as an expression ofopposition to DWSR, they consider a global regime are solely the

interests of American capitalism.

Secondly, the structural adjustment programs of IMF and World Bank

have not seriously challenged the international capitalist order in the

South.The situation of the southern states has instead undermined

found another way: with the collapse of legal and administrative

structures of national and international, and social actors vast areas of

the South and the former Soviet bloc from simply further legal and

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administrative instructions of the IMF / WB and forging closer economic

and political institutional structures independently of the States:

economic life and major centers of capital accumulation in the South are

largely escaped the institutional frameworks state and interstate to work

as part of the economy and try to capture some of the state apparatus

to conduct their own ground.Social groups threatened by the ravages

caused by the structural adjustment policies of the IMF / WB have

supported this trend.And capital accumulation that results found no

difficulty gateways already available to groups capitalist North, whether

to exchange goods, to sell drugs, to find financial intermediaries, to the

arms trade on a small scale or any other international transactions.In

the 1990s, military tactics and policies of the United States towards the

South have reinforced these trends, as well as the rest of the U.S.

approach to economic regulation, be it financial or paradise tax.Europe

has directly felt the impact of these policies: it is indeed the preferred

destination of movements of people away from African countries failed

and the countries of the former Soviet bloc and she also felt the effects

of an infinity of other nuisances associated with the infernal machinery

of DWSR, such as debt crises and so-called programs of "structural

adjustment" of the IMF / WB that are in fact nothing other than

destruction programs structural.

The military machine of the United States represents an excellent means

of coercion to solve a problem that does not really exist at present: an

anti-capitalist left in a semi-peripheral countries with strong

international support.Siege warfare, with its blockade intended to starve

parts of the population, its bombing of the country's economic

infrastructure, followed by financing and assistance in organizing an

internal revolt, is an extremely powerful gear to combat progressive

outbreaks in the South.But in the absence of such outbreaks, and when

the real problem is the disintegration of the state, these instruments

have absolutely no interest in the countries of Western Europe.These

fires burned, probably for decades, the Western Balkans, which

threatens the West of the great migrations, and gave birth to mafia

states that have ties with the major economic centers of Western

Europe.

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V.The Bush administration and the growing crisisof American leadership

During the 1990s, various U.S. administrations have continued to

impose their priorities for international policy and other major capitalist

powers have made each time the trailer United States instead of trying

to counterbalance .Yet all these successive victories led an equally

predictable negative consequences: they have failed to confirm their

victories in establishing their political domination on new bases

stable.In one case we could say that the United States have managed

to strike a blow that could put away a long-term threat: one thinks of

the efforts to control economic lamenace Japanese in the late 1980s,

followed by effective measures to prevent Japan from establishing, inthe 1990s, a protective cordon around its regional network of capital

accumulation in East and Southeast Asia.

But outside of that one success, the U.S. has accumulated victories that

have never resulted in the production of a structure of domination

stable.The triumph of the Gulf War in 1991 was derived at the regional

level and resulted in the strategic paralysis of U.S. policy in the Middle

East, the erosion of the blockade of Iraq in the late 1990s, the erosion

of stability in Saudi Arabia and the erosion of the role of mediator of the

United States in the endless process of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The triumph in Bosnia and in the war waged by NATO against Serbia

caused a backlash in the form of a Security Policy and Defence European

Union.The court provision ally designed to Milosevic led to the creation

of the International Court of Justice.The stunning success of the U.S.

Treasury in its strategic partnership with the "Russian Reform" and the

power is dependent on Russia through the debt was followed by thecollapse of the ruble and the denunciation of the Russian debt under the

effect of the crisis in East Asia.The crisis in East Asia itself has triggered

the opening of the triumphant South Korean economy and the failure of

regionalist initiatives taken by Japan, but all this has served only to

strengthen efforts regionalization of economic and political ties in the

East and Southeast Asia.Efforts to build a European political system led

by the United States and focused on NATO, excluding Russia through

the war against Serbia, have not resolved the Russian question.Instead,

they opened the way to the leadership of Putin in Russia, marked by a

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strong desire to revitalize the Russian state and breaking down new

barriers between the Russian and European political systems, which will

launch in Europe West positive reactions and resulted in something very

like a rivalry Germany / United States to establish links with

Russia.Policy toward China was also marked by the absence of any

strategic progress.

Joseph Nye said that in the early 1990s, today gives the measure of

American failure.He stated in effect that the combination of what he

called soft power and hard powerof the United States would succeed in

transforming the environment of other States so that they come to

spontaneously align their desires of those of the United States.This was

indeed the situation in effect for much of the Cold War.But during the1990s, this became less and less true, and while some states have

played the game the United States and acted as the United States

wanted, they did so with an increasing reluctance.

Nye gave us another clue in predicting that the indirect

influence[soft]U.S. become increasingly effective, while its direct

power [hard], that is to say military would play a role less and less

important.At the time, this prediction appeared likely.The American

model of capitalism seemed to triumph, it generated enthusiasm and

was a model of growth in many countries.The IMF had no more than to

structural adjustment as the only path to a bright future of casino

capitalism where capital flows surfing floating exchange rates did figure

new wave of capitalist modernization.Prospects, which seemed so

promising in early 1990 to develop the authority and the

institutionalization of international organizations led by the United

States, as the Security Council United Nations, IMF and World Bank, and

later the WTO, have not materialized.The ability of indirect

influence[soft power]has virtually disappeared and the enthusiasm for

American power outside the United States now seems limited to small

groups of extremely wealthy people who consider the U.S. as ultimate

defenders of their private interests.

The natural tendency, in this context seems to be the erosion of

international regimes under U.S. influence with states still trailing the

United States but showing signs of subversion believe components, withinitiatives of regionalization taking the magnitude , and states reacting

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to the situation of vulnerability created by the DWSR improvising more

and more individual measures to limit the risks associated with the

movement of hot money.The end of the U.S. boom can only reinforce

this trend gradually weaken as the centripetal forces of the United

States.

The problem of legitimacy: the disintegration

of the overall policy of the masses of the

United States

The international activities of the American state during the Cold War

have greatly benefited from the fact that the U.S. was perceived by a

large proportion of the electorate of other capitalist states of the Centre

as the true protector and leader of the democratic world Liberal against

communism.What U.S. presidents were popular or not in Europe and

the Pacific, the world leader of the United States was accepted by all

populations.Added to this was a real sense of collective identity as a

"West" united against the communist enemy.No doubt this feeling of

common identity was he particularly shared by the bourgeoisie who

remembered the war of 1940 and remained grateful to the U.S. state for

defending its interests in every sense of the term.But the approval of

the United States extended far beyond the social sectors of the

electorate-Democrats of the capitalist countries.

In this context, military campaigns and U.S. support for dictatorships

were justified by the need to vigorously defend the liberal democratic

world against the Soviet threat that criticism and demonstrations of

unilateral power of the United States against its own allies remained

largely under wraps, with the sole exception of vehement criticism of

French President de Gaulle, a European political leader who had beentrained before the installation of U.S. hegemony after the war.

Yet the world of post-war, there is a weakening of the U.S. recognition

as a natural leader of the West, and the unconditional acceptance of

unilateral measures eral of the United States against other capitalist

states and the Centre manceuvres United States to multilateral

organizations like the IMF, NATO and the GATT.

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These legitimacy problems are partly explained by how the Clinton

administration, and also that the first Bush administration, have tried to

legitimize Western expansionism

and American post cold war by passing to the global triumph of

liberalism.This attitude resulted in the Atlantic world enthusiasm for

new projects ambitious "global governance" liberal, cosmopolitan

citizens' rights and behavior of Western states resolutely focused on

liberal principles - trends that were soon to be in conflict with the

international behavior of real United States.But these problems of

legitimacy must also be supplied by another source: the conscious

efforts of other capitalist states of the Centre, particularly in Western

Europe, to use standardized liberalism as a political tool to limit theability of U.S. to fi liberal principles and rules of international

institutions.Under such conditions, the reference to anti-communist

common values could no longer be current.

Various political analysts and U.S. officials seem to believe that the lack

of popular legitimacy relatively reliable, internationally, of the foreign

policy of the United States is irrelevant because the masses do not

count in international politics.If they actually believe what they say,

they are largely in error.During the 1990s, the political masses certainly

has not taken center stage.There is no popular revolutions, but only

riots and revolts throughout the world, who were supported by no

organization, no program, no strategy.But in the long run, a power that

tries to dominate world politics without being able to ensure the political

loyalty of a substantial part of the world outside his own electorate is

likely to encounter serious problems.It will be in trouble, and often

taken by surprise, not only by the mass movements arrayed against it

but also by states capable of mobilizing international support to resist

the power games of the United States.

It seems that in the foreseeable future the United States are trapped in

capitalism and a political system unable to generate an internal foreign

policy may pirer ins to support major social movements in other parts of

world.His only international support, certainly enthusiastic but less and

less influential, now appears to be the group of superrich and a

mishmash of various authoritarian, conservative Christian fanatics andfree trade.Outside these groups, support the international role of the

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United States seems almost reduced to a hard-instrumentalism: use the

U.S. if possible and follow when you can not do otherwise.

VI.Conclusions: assumptions for the futuredevelopment and future of the left

It seems that there are two main options for future developments over

the next decade:

Successful efforts of an enemy that requires steady military

confrontation with the United States and causing a new rift global

evidence to support U.S. political supremacy.

A continuous sliding, punctuated by the power games of the United

States, in a context of international disintegration and chaos increased.

The United States are moving towards

centralization of military power and to search

for a new global political cleavage

Faced with the failure of this quest for a new structural basis of

American supremacy, first Clinton administration and now a very open

way the Bush administration tried to move the center of world politics

more strongly to the field of American force: military power.

Washington seeks to overcome the constraints posed by a series of

arms control agreements already in place or nearing completion: the

anti-ballistic ABM Treaty, the Protocol on biological ar my, the treaty

banning all nuclear testing, the Convention on small arms, the treaty

banning landmines.The common message in all these areas is that

other states should not be able to seek safety in the international arms

control, but only by seeking the support of American power.

The most significant aspect of this political axis is, by far, the effort to

discard the ABM treaty and to develop the missile defense (NMD).This

will give Washington in the perspective of attacking aggressively nuclear

powers, and yet again to subordinate the other capitalist powers to

dominate American politics.These will take effect in the following

choice: either they are placed under the protection of anti-missile shield

and become addicted if the U.S. have attacked nuclear powers like

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China, or they actually leave the system military alliance of the United

States and they are preparing a future of military insecurity and political

exclusion.

The Bush administration is also seeking a way to find a more stable

global political cleavage around which it could indoctrinate allies in a

campaign of international politics in the longer-term.On assuming

office, she seemed to have chosen the theme of a campaign to divide

"contain China", focused on North Korea and Taiwan as key points of

confrontation.But Sept. 11 has focused the search for a stable cleavage

a "war against terrorism" to be conducted by a "coalition against

terrorism" led by the United States.

In the context of the war in Afghanistan, asked the states to decide on

participation in this coalition.They accept, they find themselves

supporting a military and political campaign on which they have neither

control nor significant influence on the choice of targets in the coalition

or the methods used to combat these targets.This coalition does not

have a collective forum for policy development: it is simply an extreme

form of an alliance between America and its satellites, where each state

tries to talk bilaterally with the United States while they decide.And this

anti-terrorist coalition combines military instruments, instruments of

intelligence, and a common discipline in diplomacy and in international

organizations like the UN.Organizations like NATO are marginalized for

some time.States that refuse to join the coalition against terrorism are

under threat of hostile action by the United States.

By defining the new cleavage as a war against terrorism, the Bush

administration avoids any substantive definition of the enemy: terrorism

can refer to any state or armed group that demonstrated hostilityagainst United States.At the same time, this campaign may appeal to

many Southern states who are facing discounts in domestic causes:

these states can get support in their efforts to crush opposition at home.

The attack of September 11 offers a popular base for this campaign by

showing that there is a genuine, existential, from armed groups in the

Middle East.The hostility of most of the population of the Arab world

and many people in Muslim countries against U.S. policy visa-vis Israel,

Iraq, and other issues in the Middle East provides an additional basis to

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mobilize the support of people in the Western world for the anti-terrorist

coalition.

Washington can use this new polarization to restructure Western

liberalism and produce a new political base for the right.Instead of

liberal universalist and pacify the world by applying the rules liberal to

all, including the United States and the Wes

american global government: will it work? - peter gowan

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