With the election of Clinton and the Democratic-controlled Congress, the MDE and the ZPC gained strategic positions in the elaboration and implementation of foreign policy. Madeleine Albright, ‘Sandy’ Berger, Dennis Ross, Cohen, and Martin Indyk and an army of lesser known functionaries, militarists and Zionists launched a series of wars, military attacks and severe sanctions against Yugoslavia, Somalia, Sudan and Iraq. They devastated their population (over 500,000 children died in Iraq as a direct result of US starvation sanctions), destroyed their national productive facilities and, intentionally disarticulated and fragmented their nations into violent ethno-tribal and religious mini-states. While Clinton embraced the military road to empire building, he was also totally committed to the financial sector of the US economy (in particular, the most speculative activities) by de-regulating all controls, oversight and constraints on ‘hedge funds’, investment banks and equity houses. Under the tutelage of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, the pro-Israel Alan Greenspan, the Clinton regime became the launching pad for the full conversion of the US into a speculation-driven economy, culminating in the dot-com bubble which burst in 2000-2001, and the massive Enron and World Com swindles leading up to the current financial meltdown of 2006-2008.
While the MDE gained a dominant role, the ascendance of speculative capital marginalized and eroded the political influence and economic weight of productive capital, forcing it overseas and/or to transfer funds into the financial-speculative sector. The socio-economic basis of market-driven empire-building (MDEB) was weakened relative to the militarists and the ZPC in setting the US foreign policy agenda. This new power configuration opened the door for the total takeover by these same forces during the 8 years of Bush (Junior)’s presidency. The latter quickly eliminated any residual influence of the market-driven imperialists, forcing the resignation of his first Treasury Secretary O’Neal and others. Even hybrid market-militarists like Colin Powell who went along with the global war strategy but raised tactical questions were subsequently forced into retirement.
MDE were in total control of the government in all spheres, from the elaboration of war propaganda, the build-up of a global network of terror and assassination teams, to colonial wars and the systematic use of torture abroad and the savaging of elementary freedoms at home. Within the MDE, the ZPC gained dominance, especially in the formulation and the implementation of total war strategies in Iraq and the unconditional backing of Israel’s genocidal politics in Gaza and the West Bank. Every sector of the government was geared to war, bellicose action and especially to subordinating economic policies to military practices informed by the military-driven Israeli colonization.
The convergence of policy and practice between the MDE and the ZPC within the highest levels of government and their mutual reinforcement, gave US foreign policy its extremist military character. Zionist cultural and media power provided an army of academic and journalistic ideologues and mass media platforms which the MDE previously lacked – and amplified their message. The linking of traditional US MDE and the emerging power of the Israeli-ZPC buttressed the spread of authoritarian controls and harsh and widespread censorship over any politician, intellectual or media critic of Israel and its unconditional supporters in the ZPC.
The joint forces of the MDE and ZPC have reshaped the US military command to serve their plans for new major wars – against Iran – and the prolongation and extension of wars against Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon and elsewhere. The MDE have failed to pursue the free trade openings in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East – leaving the field wide open for entirely new trading and investment networks involving China, Europe, Japan, India, Russia and the Middle Eastern sovereign funds. Even with the onset of the recession in the US and the meltdown of the financial markets, the militarists have refused to change or alter their stranglehold on the budget and foreign policy, causing the government to resort to printing currency to finance the bailout of speculators and their investment banks.
Imperial Wars, Social Revolutions and Capitalist Restorations
The historical record demonstrates that imperial wars destroy the productive forces and social networks of targeted countries. In contrast, market-driven economic empire building gains hegemony via collaboration with local political and economic elites, taking control of strategic industries, minerals and energy via direct investments and loans, privatizations and denationalization, and favorable trade and monetary agreements. Market-driven empire building takes over, it does not destroy the productive forces; it does not demolish the social fabric, it reconstructs or ‘adjusts’ it to accommodate its accumulation needs.
The evolution of social revolutionary regimes in a post liberation period shows a common pattern reflecting the political-economic external constraints imposed by military imperialism. The revolutionary regimes expropriate and nationalize the major means of production, control foreign trade and organize the planning of the economy. They eliminate foreign control over strategic economic sectors, centralize political and economic control as well as redistribute land and income. In many cases these radical measures were imposed upon the revolutionary governments by imperial economic boycotts, the flight of capitalist and landlords, the non-cooperation of managers and technicians and by the necessity of reconstruction in the face of large-scale destruction. The US embargo and similar constraints on external financial aid have forced revolutionary governments to rely on the rationing of scarce resources for priority public projects, limiting its capacity to increase individual consumption.
As a result, the post-revolutionary regimes were forced to deal with market-driven empire builders. They contracted large-scale short-term and long-term trade agreements, joint investment ventures through equitable profit sharing agreements and a broad range of technological contracts involving royalty payments. In other words, given the unfavorable position of the revolutionary economy in the world market and the low level of development of the forces of production, the market-driven empire building countries were in a position to secure lucrative economic opportunities. In contrast, the military driven empire attempted to inflict maximum economic damage to compensate for its military defeat.
The revolutionary regimes under Communist leadership featured characteristics, which foreshadowed positive future relations with market-driven imperial countries. Their vertical leadership and concentrated political power facilitated quick and relatively easy changes from collectivist to neo-liberal policies, while hindering the democratic mechanisms, which might have corrected erroneous and harmful economic decisions. Secondly, unchecked power at the top in a time of scarcity led to the conversion of power into privilege, corruption and social inequalities. These developments created a wealthy nepotistic elite with an interest in deepening ties with their capitalist counterparts from the imperial states. These internal changes coincided with the interests of market-driven capitalists willing to establish lucrative ‘beach heads’ and relations with elite groups in the post-revolutionary society and state. Market-driven empire builders were attracted to the tight controls exercised over labor and the lack of competition from other military-driven imperial states.
Post-revolutionary economies continued to be embedded in the world capitalist marketplace and subject to its competitive demands. In the best of circumstances, even with a democratic and socially egalitarian leadership and relatively favorable world commodity prices, the revolutionary regime would need to balance the social demands of a socialist domestic economy (with demands for increases in income, social services and workplace improvement and consumer goods) and the world market demands for greater efficiency, increased capital investments, rising productivity and labor discipline. Given the built-in biases toward political and military security embedded in the bureaucratic centralist structures, it was not surprising that production would stagnate. The constraints and the centralized elites’ inability to micro-manage the economy beyond the period of reconstruction was one reason for stagnation. The other was that the regime would prefer a hierarchical organized capitalist structure (over any democratic changes from below), which would not challenge, but rather strengthen, the communist elite’s position in a ‘new’ eclectic system.
In other words there would be a dual transition from imperial-dominated extractive capitalism to centralized socialism which would entail a period of reconstruction and national unification with an organized and disciplined labor force. This would be followed by a transition to a centralized mixed state capitalist economy, increasingly penetrated by market-driven imperial capital.
Was ‘Socialism a Detour to Capitalism’? Were ‘Imperial Wars Necessary for Capitalist Expansion’?
The historical record documents the continued growth and expansion of market-driven empire building throughout the post World War II period, without wars, significant military intervention, boycotts, embargos or other offensive belligerent actions. The expansion took place in the context of non-revolutionary, revolutionary and post-revolutionary regimes. Germany’s market-driven empire builders traded with the Communist East, China and Russia before, during and after the fall of Communism, accumulating huge trade and productive advantages over the US. The same occurred with Japan with regard to China and other Asian communist countries.
The market imperialists did not depend, as some apologists for military imperialists argue ‘on the protective umbrella’ of US militarism, but on their superior position in the world market and the greater development of the forces of production, which allowed them to enter and secure favorable and lucrative economic positions.
In contrast, the US empire builders, who started the post-war 1945-50 period in a uniquely favorable position in the world market, wasted their massive economic resources in funding wars against successful revolutions - China, Korea, Indochina, Cuba, and now in prolonged colonial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Billions more have been spent in numerous surrogate wars in Angola, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Chile with no economic payoffs for US MNCs over and against its European and Asian competition. The US imperial wars failed to enhance its economic empire. US Empire builders shifted massive resources away from producing goods for the international market and upgrading their industrial productivity in order to retain world and domestic market shares to its monstrous and wasteful military budgets. The result has been a steady decline of the US economic empire relative to its competitor market-driven empires. Ironically, when the centralized collectivist regimes eventually made the transition toward capitalism, it was because of their inner social and economic contradictions and not because of US military policies. The restoration of capitalism had little to do with the hundreds of billions of dollars in US military spending.
In contrast, the market-driven empires from the end of the 1940’s benefited from US imperial wars, by securing lucrative US military contracts and were able to concentrate their state expenditures and investment policies on securing overseas markets. They were in an ideal position to reap the benefits resulting from the socialist regimes’ transition to capitalism.
Given the emergence of post-Communist political and social ruling elites who blindly adhered to free market dogma with their corrupt, authoritarian and privileged political practices, in retrospect ‘socialism’ did appear as a ‘detour’ to capitalist restoration. However the structural changes of some communist political elites, especially in China and Vietnam, created the essential foundations for a capitalist take-off. They unified the country, educated and trained a healthy, disciplined work-force, launched basic industries, eliminated war lords and local ethnic fiefdoms. Subsequently Communist liberalization opened the door to the peaceful economic invasion of market-driven imperialism, safeguarded by a strong centralized state limiting any working class or nationalist opposition or protest. The Communist elites established a framework ideal for subsequent imperialist reentry and expansion.
The historical record makes it clear that imperial wars were not necessary for economic expansion. Empire-driven militarism thoroughly undermined the US long-term competitive position. If the driving force of empire building is economic conquest, then market-driven empires are far superior to military-driven empires. The goal of ‘colonial political dominance’, pursued by military-driven imperialists, is in the modern period, a chimera, as demonstrated by a history of political defeats in Asia, Africa, Latin America and now in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Military-Driven Imperialism Today and the Newly Emerging Imperial Powers
One might conclude that the US imperial leadership would have ‘learned the lessons’ of failed military-driven empire building from the their experience over the past 50 years. But as we pointed out earlier, the internal structural dynamics of the US economy and the reconfiguration of the political elite directing the political system have led in the opposite direction. The 21st century has witnessed the ascendancy of the most zealous exponents of military-driven empire building in the entire post-World War II period. An overview of US imperial policy shows the proliferation and intensification of direct wars, surrogate wars, military confrontations in which the US favors militarist allies over countries with lucrative markets and profitable investment opportunities in natural resources.
Market-Driven Versus Militarist Alliances
The militarist and Zionist takeover of US empire building in the 21st century is manifested in their strategic decisions, alliances and priorities, each and everyone of which is diametrically opposed to market-based empire building and ultimately doomed to further erode the position of the US empire.
The newly emerging empire building states (like China), rely almost exclusively on market-driven strategies designed by political elites linked to industrialists and technocrats. They are quickly dominating manufacturing markets, accessing strategic raw materials and securing long-term trade agreements at the expense of the increasingly militarist, but internally deteriorating US empire. Near the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the imperial policies of the US militarists and Zionists have demonstrated their willingness to make deep sacrifices in market growth by choosing to align the US with costly and dubious militarist regimes in all regions of the world, beginning with the US alliance with Israel.
In the Middle East, unlike market-driven empire builders, the US militarists and Zionists have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, destroying many lucrative oil deals and joint ventures and leading to the quadrupling the world price of oil. Instead they have invested (and lost) over a trillion dollars in non-productive, non-economic, military activity. Militarist imperialism has weakened the entire economic fabric of the US Empire without any ‘compensatory’ gains on the military side. The prolonged war in Iraq (6 years and running) has demoralized the US ground troops and weakened US military capability to engage in any ‘third front’ in which the US has important economic interests. US liberal market-driven imperialists describe this as ‘imperial overstretch’. While the US invests in non-productive and unsuccessful military conquests, profoundly indebting the domestic economy, China, India, Korea, Russia, Europe, the Middle East and even Latin America pile up trade surpluses while expanding their economic empires via private and sovereign investments.
Largely because of the political fusion and strategic convergence of interests between militarists and Zionists, the US empire builders choose to sacrifice lucrative ties to the richest markets among the Gulf State in the Middle East and among predominantly Muslim countries in order to favor Israel, a resource-poor militarist-colonial state with a third rate market for goods and investments. US militarists have subjected America’s empire building to strategies in the Middle East, which mostly favor Israel’s colonial and regional hegemonic drive. This places the US on a direct confrontational path with Lebanon, Syria, Iran and even the Gulf States who feel threatened by Israel’s constant resort to offensive military power to attack its neighbors. No Arab oil country, no matter how conservative and pro-capitalist, can afford to open its economy to the US, if it believes that Washington will subordinate it to the vision of a militarist Israel-US dominated sphere of influence. By unconditionally backing Israel’s colonial and hegemonic interests, American militarists have gained a strategic domestic political ally (the Zionist Power Configuration) but it has come at an enormous cost to US economic empire building. Moreover the Israeli state has run the biggest and most aggressive espionage operations in the US of any country since the fall of the USSR, thus calling into question its ‘security benefits.’ The multiplicity of enemies resulting from Israel’s racist-colonialist policies ensures that the US will be engaged in decades of war, or as long as the US taxpayers can sustain the demands of the military empire.
Military-driven empire building is manifested not only in the Middle East but throughout the world. In Africa, the US backs the Ethiopian military regime and its weak and isolated puppet regime in Somalia against an Islamist-secular nationalist coalition representing the majority of Somalis. Washington and Israel finance and arm the Sudanese separatists in Darfur against the oil-rich central Sudanese government. In both Somalia and Sudan, China and other emerging imperial powers have secured access to strategic oil rich sites. While the US spends billions of dollars on endless wars, propaganda campaigns and sanctions, China reaps hundreds of millions in profits. While the US financed African wars destroy the entire fabric of production and society in Somalia, militarizing impoverished Ethiopia, the Chinese build roads and infrastructure to facilitate exports in both the Sudan and Northern Somalia. Pentagon-directed colonial wars in Africa, conducted by surrogates, undermine the political support of economic collaborators while the market-driven empires enhance their ties with local economic elites and political rulers.
In Latin America, the US military imperialists have so far contributed $6 billion dollars in military aid to Colombia’s militarist regime during the 21st century, destroying the entire social fabric in the rural areas, while the rest of Latin America expanded their ties with Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Washington has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in failed efforts to destabilize Venezuela’s nationalist-democratic Chavez Government. As a result US capitalists have lost out on billions of dollars in investments and trading contracts in Venezuela to China, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and Iran. By making Colombia the centerpiece of their South American policy, US militarist empire builders have lost out on the enormously lucrative economic opportunities accompanying the commodity price boom in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia.
In Asia, despite the deepening US economic dependence on China to sustain to the rapidly depreciating US dollar (China holds $1.5 trillion dollars in foreign reserves which has lost 60% of its value since 2002), the US militarists still engage in sustained anti-Chinese propaganda campaigns and highly provocative incidents. The US-backed violent protests against the Chinese presence in Tibet fomented by the Dalai Lama and CIA-funded exile organizations is only the more recent example. American Zionists have directed a political campaign against the expansion of Chinese investments and contracts (market-driven imperialism) in the Sudan. The Zionist role in the so-called ‘Darfur’ campaign is based on Sudan’s support for the Palestinians and opposition to Israel’s genocidal policy in Gaza.
China has so far generally overlooked US military provocations such as the shooting down of a Chinese fighter plane, spy flights over Chinese offshore territory, the deliberate bombing of its embassy in Belgrade and the sale of advanced missiles to Taiwan. The US financing of the separatist demonstrations among Tibetan exiles is designed to tarnish China’s image in the lead up to its hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics. China’s market-driven empire builders ignore US military provocations because they had little effect on Chinese overseas and domestic economic expansion. Nevertheless China has increased spending on modernizing its military defense capabilities. More significantly, as the US economy declines and enters a deep recession in 2008, and as the dollar continues to fall ($1.60 to 1 Euro as of May 2008), China has turned toward the Asian, European, Middle Eastern markets. Asian markets now account for 50% of world trade growth as of 2008. In 2007 China increased production and the development of its market to sustain growth rates at least five times higher than the militarist-dominated US Empire. Even more significant, the great majority of Chinese exporters (over 800,000) have shifted payments to Euros, Yen, Pounds Sterling and the Renminbi in its trading with non-US trading partners.
Russia, shaking off the shackles of Clinton-backed pillage during the gangster capitalism of the Yeltsin years in the 1990’s, has taken off during the 21st century under the leadership of President Putin. US military-driven empire builders were able to integrate and subordinate all the former members of the Russia-centered Warsaw Pact into the US-dominated NATO. In the 21st Century, the Russian economy has expanded rapidly between 6% and 8%, established majority control over strategic resources and has sought to lessen its vulnerability to US military encirclement. While Germany, Italy and most of the major Asian trading countries (China, India and Japan) have obtained lucrative trading and investment agreements with Russia, the US militarists have concentrated on military encroachment along Russia’s European and Asian borders. The US is pushing to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, and preparing to station offensive, so-called ‘missile shields’ in Poland and the Czech Republic on the absurd pretext that such highly sophisticated installations are intended to protect Western Europe from attacks by distant Iran rather than target Moscow, just 5 minutes away by missile attack.
Conclusion
US military-driven empire building has made costly military alliances with peripheral countries at a catastrophic economic cost. The persistence of militarist empire builders has systematically undercut market-driven empire building and has pushed the domestic US economy to near bankruptcy. The twin motors of the contemporary empire and domestic economy, speculative finance and militarism, have driven the US economy backwards at the same time that established and emerging imperial competitors are advancing.
Comparative historical data covering the entire half-century to the present demonstrates that European, Japanese and now China and India’s market-driven expansion has been far more successful in securing market shares, developing the productive forces and accessing strategic raw materials than US military empire building.
Market-driven empire building has both resulted from and created a strong civil society in which socio-economic priorities take precedent in defining domestic and foreign economic policy over military priorities and definitions of international reality. US empire builders, academics and political advisers have interpreted, what they call ‘the rise of US global power its victory in the Cold War and the decline of Communism’ as a vindication of military-driven empire building. They have ignored the rise of capitalist competitors and the relative and absolute decline of the US as an economic power. It can be argued that the newly emerging market-driven former Communist countries (like China and Russia) represent a greater global challenge to the US Empire than the previous stagnant bureaucratic Communist regimes.
Militarism is deeply embedded in the structure, ideology and policies of the entire US governing class, its political parties, the executive and legislative branches, the judiciary and the armed forces. Over the same half-century countervailing market-driven empire builders have declined as a defining force in the formulation of foreign policy in the US. The growing encroachment of the militant Zionist power configuration within the policy-making directorate has been greatly facilitated by the ascendancy of militarism and the relative decline of economic-empire building.
The long period of incremental decline of US economic empire building and the trillions of dollars wasted by military-driven empire building has come to a climax. In the new millennium with the profound devaluation of the imperial currency (the dollar), the huge indebtedness and loss of markets Washington is totally dependent on the good will of its commercial partners to keep accepting constantly devalued dollars in exchange for essential commodities.
The immediate outcome is likely to be a major domestic crisis, which could be accompanied by one more desperate and futile military attack on Iran and/or Venezuela or a forced confrontation with China and/or Russia. Desperate acts of declining military empires have historically accelerated the demise of imperial rulers.
Out of the debris of failed empires two possible outcomes could emerge. A new rabidly nationalist authoritarian regime or the re-birth of a republic based on the reconstruction of a productive economy centered on the domestic market and social priorities, free from foreign entanglements and power configurations whose only purpose is to subordinate the republic to overseas colonial ambitions.
The dismantling of the military driven empire will not occur ‘by choice’ but by imposed circumstances, including the incapacity of domestic institutions to continue to finance it. The demise of the militarist governing class will follow the collapse of their domestic economic foundations. The result could be a withered empire, or a democratic republic. When and how a new political leadership will emerge will depend on the nature of the social configurations, which undertake the reconstruction of US society.
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? Copyright James Petras, Global Research, 2008
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