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Transcript of 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