Jan Nederveen Pieterse on Globalization and Empire
The fundamentals of American weakness are its shrinking share of world manufacturing, its gargantuan consumption, low savings rate, faulty policies (massive military spending, massive war spending, deep tax cuts) and gigantic financial deficits. Some problems are structural (high American health care costs are a function of lack of restraint on pharmaceutical industries and reflect the large influence of business interests); this prompts outsourcing, which further weakens the American economy. The military interventions are destabilizing (increase risks for others) and costly (adding to American economic problems) and erode American legitimacy. So the problems are not merely overstretch
By Matt Kennard on Sunday, June 20th, 2010 - 959 words.
MK: What is the most prevalent trend: Globalization or Empire? Are the two inextricably linked?
JNP: The most prevalent trend is globalization. Globalization is a long term process of growing worldwide interconnectedness. This process comes with unequal power. Empire is one form of that and so is hegemony, domination, primacy, rivalry and so forth.
MK: Do you think that the “process” of globalization – in terms of increased international inter-connectedness – necessitates Empire? Isn’t the American Empire just a seperate entity hijacking globalization for its own ends? Just asthere can be Empire without globalization – as we have seen – can’t there be globalization without Empire?
JNP: Unequal power is probably inevitable (history comes with differentials and gradients) but colonialism, imperialism, slavery, genocide are not inevitable. Of course there can be globalization without empire. The US turns to empire because it can no longer control globalization, more precisely, it is no longer riding the crest of the globalization wave and is seeking to regain ground by military means. The US is trying to stem its structural decline that has been ongoing for decades by doing what some think it does best: have guns will travel. But it cannot hijack globalization just as it can’t stop winter from coming.
MK: Do you think that military interventions around the world are a viable and efficacious method of responding to the inevitable decline of American power? Some would argue it has the opposite effect – imperial overstretch etc.
JNP: I don’t think so. The fundamentals of American weakness are its shrinking share of world manufacturing, its gargantuan consumption, low savings rate, faulty policies (massive military spending, massive war spending, deep tax cuts) and gigantic financial deficits. Some problems are structural (high American health care costs are a function of lack of restraint on pharmaceutical industries and reflect the large influence of business interests); this prompts outsourcing, which further weakens the American economy. The military interventions are destabilizing (increase risks for others) and costly (adding to American economic problems) and erode American legitimacy. So the problems are not merely overstretch.
MK: Is the US alone in wrestling with the problems you describe? It seems economic globalization has percolated nearly every national boundary throughout the globe. Is American aggression a symptom of the disease of the inexorable march of neo-liberal globalization; a symptom that would be mirrored if any other major Western power took its place as hegemon?
JNP: Globalization’s gonna get your mama! But blaming globalization is too simple. Neoliberal globalization per se isn’t bent on geopolitical conquest; it is rather a geo-economic project with many different actors. Transnational capitalism is deterritorialized and flexible and its aim is market share, not territorial control. (Add the role of the IMF, World Bank and WTO and the situation becomes more serious, yet still far short of military geopolitics.) Current American aggression builds on its Cold War role as global hegemon and its specialization in a military industrial complex with a size (expenditure of $ 12 trillion since the 1950s, $ 400 billion per year), global reach (regional commands that cover the globe and 725 bases worldwide) and domestic standing (the most trusted institution in the United States) that far outstrips and is unlike any other country’s military apparatus.
MK: Isn’t neo-liberalism more dangerous than past forms of imperialism in that it is insidious and so harder to rebel against than, say, a slave master with a whip? Would this explain the relative acquiescence of the Third World to neo-liberal imperatives?
JNP: Yes, neoliberalism is more insidious: because it comes with an ideology of an all inclusive free market, sanctioned by mainstream economists and aided by new technologies such as information and communication technologies. The relative acquiescence of the majority world is relative indeed: it applies mainly to indebted countries that had no choice but to accept the terms of the IMF and World Bank. It doesn’t apply to East Asia, China and India which did not carry major debt and where economic growth has occurred but not because of neoliberal policies. Second, also in Latin America and Africa neoliberalism is now passé. Third, as a theory the Washington Consensus is no longer accepted even in Washington, though as a policy it continues by default. Fourth, the failures of American capitalism (the end of the tech boom, Enron, etc.) undermine its appeal worldwide. The United States now practises economic brinkmanship (deficit spending to shrink government and defund government programmes, risking recession and the reserve status of the dollar).
MK: Is democracy relevant anymore where structural adjustment programs have been enforced? Lula in Brazil is a self-confessed socialist and was voted in on those grounds but has had his hands tied by the neo-liberalism legacy in Brazil where balanced budgets and other economic restraints have stopped him making the radical reforms he wanted. This is mirrored all over the world.
JNP: Yes, I’m just back from Brazil and the atmosphere is one of profound to acute disappointment. Defenders of Lula point to governability which requires alliances with conservative parties. So there are domestic as well as external constraints. The constraints reflect the overall balance of forces. American decline is likely, but we cannot count on its outcomes. Hence most important is the global justice movement and greater economic and political assertiveness on the part of Asian countries and the European Union.
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Matt Kennard
26London
Matt Kennard graduated from the Journalism School at Columbia University as a Toni Stabile Investigative scholar in 2008. He now works for the Financial Times in London. He has written for the Guardian, Salon, The Comment Factory and the Chicago Tribune, amongst others. In 2006 he won the Guardian Student Feature Writer of the Year Award
mattkennard@thecommentfactory.com
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Jan Nederveen Pieterse on Globalization and Empire
The fundamentals of American weakness are its shrinking share of world manufacturing, its gargantuan consumption, low savings rate, faulty policies (massive military spending, massive war spending, deep tax cuts) and gigantic financial deficits. Some problems are structural (high American health care costs are a function of lack of restraint on pharmaceutical industries and reflect the large influence of business interests); this prompts outsourcing, which further weakens the American economy. The military interventions are destabilizing (increase risks for others) and costly (adding to American economic problems) and erode American legitimacy. So the problems are not merely overstretch
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While the questions and responses regarding globalism help drive the broader conversation on the themes the portion regarding Brazil is somewhat off the mark. Lula is not a self-confessed anything. He is president of a nation, leader of the Workers Party and comes out of a metalurgical workers union whose red white and blue banner is modeled after the United Steelworkers Union that provided workers with countervailing power in the United States. Lula has done as much for the common man/woman in Brazil as Lech Walesa did for workers in Poland. But the posit here of JNP that neoliberalism is dead is Africa and Latin America is a very dangerous idea to spread. On both continents one finds local apologists in the political and economic classes who front for US style and World Economic Form style global neoconservatism, the kind that walls of business-to-business culture from the societies it procures its "human capital" from. In Brazil, for example, the government just allocated the equivalent of $26 billion for education and schools and seed money for high-tech infrastructure. The social contract democracy model between the nation state and citizens that exists in Brazil made it happen. But Brazilian companies who have more in common with US-style business values than Brazilian ones think they are entitled to that money, and that the government will squander it. Brazil has been able to avoid the major structural problems the US now encounters as a result of the crisis its unsound methods and lack of oversight of derivatives and other free market schemes caused. Unlike Mexico, Brazil is not the victim of its own unfinished revolution. But with the US breathing down its back from bases on the border with Colombia, the Amazon can soon become the new Rio Grande.
Very good post. A few points I would like to make, however. First, from the evidence I have seen, American-based corporations dominate the global marketplace, in the neighborhood of 80% I believe, which makes America more invested and thus interested in maintaining and extending the current globalized capitalist structure. Thus it is not merely that America still is the world's top military power, but it is deploying that power to maintain its position atop the global economy. Second, the military action is occurring in the region that it is in large part because that area is proximate to major sources of oil, which is the absolutely necessary energy source for the global market. If the oil supply were to become uncertain or more expensive, prices of goods from manufacturing locations would rise and that would be problematic for global corporations in the far distant consuming locations. Third, America sees the suppression of "terrorism" (sic) as vital both because "terrorism" threatens the confidence of the global business community in the safety of its operation, and even moreso because "terrorism," if left unchecked, might give encouragement to open rebellion by other local groups who have beefs with globalism–sort of fear of the "domino effect" that haunted the US in Vietnam.