Apeldoorn-Graaff_ClassPower-US-GrandStrategy-SGIR2010

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NETWORKS OF US CAPITALIST CLASS POWER AND

POST-COLD WAR GRAND STRATEGY:THE EVOLUTION OF US IMPERIALISM FROM CLINTON

TO OBAMA

Bastiaan van Apeldoorn & Nan de Graaff VU University Amsterdam

Department of Political ScienceDe Boelelaan 1081

1081 HV AmsterdamThe Netherlands

E-mail: [email protected] [email protected] http://www.arcipe.eu

First very preliminary draft. Please do not cite without permission

Paper to be presented at the SGIR 7th Pan-European International Relations

Conference(Standing Group International Relations of the European Consortium of Political

Science), Stockholm, Section 11 The Return of the State? Global Capitalism and Geopolitics

after the Crisis of Neoliberalism, 9 -11 September, 2010.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.arcipe.eu/http://www.arcipe.eu/http://www.arcipe.eu/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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INTRODUCTION

With the war on terror about t o enter its tenth year and showing no sign yet of abating, the name

long war coined by neoconservative s under Bush Jr. seems to be rather apt indeed. At the same time,

the world has experienced, and is still experiencing, the worst financial and economic crisis since the

1930s. Renewed fears of a double dip in the US are underlining that this crisis is i ndeed one that has

above all struck in the heartland (Gowan 2009) and has dealt another big blow to US hegemony that

according to many was already weakening if not in terminal decline (Arrighi 2005). The tectonic

plates of global power seem to shifting with especially the seemingly unstoppable rise of China

leading more and more pundits to predict the end of the West (Jacques 2008). For sure, long gone

seem to be the heady days of the 1990s when, after the end of the Cold War US primacy was

unquestioned and nothing seemed to stand in the way of a peaceful remaking of the world in the US

neoliberal image. With no enemies left, the forces of globalisation could reign freely with the US

sitting comfortably on top. That comfort has long gone. Yet, the US remains not only the largest

economy but also the only military superpower, spending about as much as the rest of the world put

together (see Ikenberry et al 2009).

Within the changing world order then, the US remains key, and the geopolitical strategy that it

pursues will not only reflect the changing structural context but also to a large extent continue to shape

its future. The study of US foreign policy, or more specifically what is called grand strategy , thus

remains critical to an understanding of the current and future world order. Grand strategy here can be

seen as the highest level of foreign policy representing a comprehensive vision of the states critical

interests and how best to promote and achieve them, and thus about the states role and position in

the world (Layne 2006: 13). 1 As the contrast with the 1990s indicates, US grand strategy appears to

have undergone important shifts in the past decades. It was in p articular when the current war on

terror was initiated by the Bush administration that this became a much debated issue. With Obama

having been elected on the promise of change, this again also raised expe ctations regarding a new

post-Bush foreign policy. Yet as an increasing number of commentators have argued, Obamas foreign

policy like that of Bush before him also shows remarkable continuities with the recent and moredistant past.

Although the them e of continuity and change in US grand strategy is since the end of the Cold

War much discussed both in the media and amongst academics, there is, as we shall argue below, in

fact little in the way of systematic and comprehensive explanations of either the observed variations of

1 The term grand strategy should not be taken to imply that foreign policy across the board always forms acoherent whole, or that there are never inconsistencies between or within certain issue areas. Nor should it betaken to mean, that, even with a clear overall strategy in place, there are no conflicts within the administrationover particular issues and the direction policy should take. Nor does a grand strategy have to be successful (inthe longer run) in order to be worthy of the name. Grand strategies may sometimes grandiosely fail, even in theirown terms, after which adjustments will have to be made.


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US grand strategy or the underlying continuities. Whereas the predictions of the parsimonious and

rationalist theories of neo-realism and neoliberalism do not match the observed behaviour, most

analysts do not go much beyond cons tructing ad hoc hypotheses to explain these deviations.

Although theories like neo-classical realism and (liberal) constructivism do go beyond the rational

actor model and open the black box of the national state, they lack an adequate conception of state-

society relations to actually make sense of the so-called domestic forces shaping US foreign policy.

Explaining US grand strategy, we argue, requires us to radically break with the realist abstraction of

the state from society, and analyse the social content and social origins of geopolitical strategy. To this

end we adopt a historical materialist perspective that seeks to uncover these social origins by analysing

to what extent and how those actors that formulate and implement US grand strategy are related to

dominant social (class) forces within US civil society. In particular, we will focus upon class and class

agency as the causal nexus between the process of capital accumulation and concomitant interests on

the one hand and the geopolitical interests and strategies of the state on the other. Linking structure to

agency the premise here is that state managers in their practices are shaped by the social positions

that they occupy in virtue of these networks and that in this way their own agency can become an

expression of a broader class agency, that is, of a project to reproduce class hegemony.

The main argument that this paper will put forward is that the variations and continuities of post-

Cold War US grand strategy can be explained in terms of underlying hegemonic capitalist class

interests, reflecting different attempts to secure the long-term interests of the US ruling class in the

realm of foreign policy. The continuities here can be explained in terms of the overall ideology and

interests of the leading sections of US capital which since the turn of the last century has been very

international in its outlook and the way in which these have been able to shape US grand strategy.

This has resulted in a strategy premised on what the radical historian William Appleman Williams

(2009) has dubbed the world view of the Open Door : that is the particular US brand of imperialism

oriented towards establishing global hegemony through creating and maintaining an open liberal

world order. We argue that although the basic tenets of this overarching US grand strategy have

remained the same, this strategy since the end of the Cold War (though arguably also before) has also

shown variation in terms of the particular shape it has taken. The persistence of what we will call USOpen Door imperialism is not to be taken for granted. Indeed, our argument is that it takes serious

effort on the part of key actors foreign policy makers, strategists and intellectuals to ensure its

reproduction. But as structures (in this case a set of ideas and concomitant practices underpinning US

foreign policy) are reproduced, they can also be transformed (Bhaskar 1979). Within different

circumstances different actor networks may come to somewhat different interpretations of US

interests, not so much regarding the overall goals of the strategy but regarding some of the means to

achieve these.


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In order, then, to examine the continuities and changes within US grand strategy since the end of

the Cold War this paper offers a comparative analysis of the Clinton, Bush and the current Obama

administrations, their grand strategies and the class networks underlying and shaping their geopolitical

agency. The paper is thus organised as follows. In the first section we will first review some of the

dominant conventional approaches to analysing US grand strategy. We will conclude that although in

particular neo-classical realism does succeed in going beyond the rational unitary actor model, it lacks

a theory to make sense of the state-society relations that it suggests are critical in explaining grand

strategy formation. It is thus that we will propose a historical materialist approach that argues that we

need to see the political agency of state managers formulating grand strategy in relation to dominant

social forces in US capitalist society, and in particular analyse how grand strategy is shaped by class

interests. In the second section we will analyse both the continuities and the changes in US grand

strategy in the post-Cold War era through the interpretative framework of the Open Door. Here we

will argue that the grand strategies pursued by the three last administrations can be seen as variations

of Open Door imperialism: displaying a strong continuity while each also representing a different

ordering and articulations of ends and means. These differences we interpret in terms of different

strategies of the US ruling class to reproduce its hegemony so-called hegemonic projects . It is thus

that we seek to link grand strategy to class strategy and underlying capitalist interests. In order to

empirically substantiate how this link materialises in the formation of US grand strategy, the third

section will analyse and compare the networks of capitalist class power underpinning each of the three

administrations. The findings show that indeed many of the grand strategy-makers of each

administration have close corporate ties, in particular to those sectors that we can associate with the

internationalist outlook of the Open Door. This then reveals the class origins of US grand strategy. Our

analysis, however, also shows that the observed shifts in this strategy should not so much be explained

in terms of different corporate / capitalist class interests per se but should be more seen as due to

political and ideological differences within the same set of interests.

THEORISING GRAND STRATEGY: TOWARDS A HISTORICAL MATERIALISTPERSPECTIVE

In this section we offer a critical review of the literature on US grand strategy since the end of the

Cold War and argue that even where this literature opens up the proverbial black box of the US state

to examine so- called domestic variables it fails to see the inner connections between US geopolitical

strategy and wider socio-economic structures and concomitant social forces. For this, we argue, we

need to adopt a historical materialist perspective in which class agency becomes the key explanans .


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The failure of so-called systemic explanations

The question of change within US grand strategy has become the object of much academic debate

especially with the Bush administration and the policies it adopted in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist

attacks. Given the amount of literature that what has been viewed as a significant shift of US grandstrategy has spawned, the absence within this literature of any attempt to explain this turn from

conventional systemic IR theories, that is, neo-realism and neoliberalism, is all the more

conspicuous. The reason for this absence is that, by their own admission, both neo-realists and

neoliberals are unable to explain this shift, or more generally any variations in / of US grand strategy

since the end of the Cold War (cf. Dueck 2004, Skidmore 2005). Nor are they in fact able to account

for its important underlying continuities. Focusing on systemic variables (i.e. an anarchic system in

which states seek to maximise relative respectively absolute gains), neo-realism in particular tends to

be at a loss in explaining changes since the end of the Cold War inasmuch as a) the end of bipolarity isseen as the major systemic change (not followed by others that could account for subsequent shifts in

US grand strategy), and b) this change would dictate a rather different foreign policy behaviour of the

US than we in fact have observed. Thus, among realists there is a strong consensus that the rational

strategy for the US would be that of offshore balancing (Layne, 2006, 2009, also Mearsheimer

2001). Contradicting the predictions of the model, however, especially the Bush II administration has

been accused of pursuing a strategy of what the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy (in a

manifesto signed by prominent neo-realists such as Waltz, Walt and Mearsheimer) has interpreted as a

dangerous move towards empire, which will engender multiple balances of power against us

(CRFP 2007; see also Schmidt and Williams 2008). From a (neo-) liberal perspective, focusing on the

systemic effects of globalisation and interdependence, the neoconservative shift under Bush has

similarly been treated as an anomaly defying rational logic (e.g., Ikenberry 2004a, 2004b).

The only example of an explicit attempt to explain variations in post- cold war US strategy on

the basis of systemic factors, is provided by Miller, who argues that the variables distribution of

power and degree of external threat act as the selector of pre -existing sets of ideas or ideal-typical

grand strategies (Miller 2010: 29). 2 Here Miller distinguishes between (defensive and offensive)

realist strategies aimed at affecting the balance of power and (defensive and offensive) and liberal

strategies aimed at ideology promotion, i.e., democracy and free markets (ibid.: 32). Apart from the

in our view untenable distinction between realist power politics and liberal idealism or rather

Millers failure to recognise that the latter is also about promoting and exercising US power (cf . Layne

2006) the problem with this variety of systemic theory is that it takes as given that what needs to be

2 Miller himself suggests that his approach may be seen as belonging to neoclassical realism (which I willdiscuss in the next section) because of its integration of systemic -material and domestic -ideational variables(Miller 2010: 29, fn. 4). However the latter, and in contrast to most neoclassical realist work that takes these alsoas key explanatory variables, are taken by Miller as dependent variables only or at the most as interveningvariables (ibid. 29-30).


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explained in any comprehensive account of US grand strategy-making. Thus Miller distinguishes four

main US grand strategies which according to him have - always?- been present in the US foreign

policy community (Miller 2010: 29). The origins of any of these four types are left unexplained,

however, nor is the question answered of why it is these four strategies rather than any other

(conceivable) strategy. Finally, by arguing that which of the four strategies is selected is dependent

only on external stimuli, we stay within the confines of the neo-realist billiard- ball model.

Non-systemic accounts: constructivism and neoclassical realism

One attempt to open the black box in order to account for variations in post- cold war US grand

strategy, and thus move beyond systemic variables, is provided by constructivist explanations (e.g.

Dueck 2004, Schonberg 2006). Dueck, for instance, has argued that given the fact that neither neo-

realism nor neoliberalism, and their (international) structural variables, can account for what he sees as

post 9/11 shift towards a US grand strategy of primacy, the explanation rather has to be the

[p]romotion and selection of particular [neoconservative] ideas () especially on the part of

leading defense and foreign policy officials ( 2004: 535). We fully concur that ideas have to play a

central role in any convincing account of the neoconservative shift but the problem with reducing it to

the realm of ideas is that how and why certain ideas rather than others were promoted and selected

remains unexplained.Within the literature, neoclassical realism stands out as the most elaborate attempt to introduce

so-called unit-level variables, including the role of ideas, while also holding on to the importance of

the international system (Rose 1998; Rathburn 2008). One of the most sophisticated and insightful

analyses of US grand strategy from this perspective is that of Christopher Layne (2006) who forcefully

argues how next to systemic variables, US grand strategy since 1940 and up to the present period, has

been driven by the aforementioned ideology of the Open Door , which has made the US pursue a

strategy of extra -regional hegemony (rather than the aforementioned offshore balancing) . Although

we share Laynes characterisation of the fundamental and unchanging over arching objectives of USgrand strategy (see below), we argue that because of his continuing commitment to a realist state-

centric paradigm in which the state is abstracted from society, Layne is unable to provide a deeper

explanation of what he himself identifies as the driving forces of US strategy. Layne may succeed in

explaining that the US has sought global hegemony because of the Open Door world view of its

policy-makers, but he does not explain why the latter has become so dominant (or indeed, hegemonic),

that is, why US policy-makers have consistently since 1940 come to define US are these interests

specified beyond observing (correctly) that US policy-makers consistent with Open Door ideology

believed that Americas prosperity was tied to its access to export markets (ibid.: 72, his emphasis).


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Needless to say Laynes analysis begs the question of why US policy -makers came to this belief,

especially given that according to Layne it led them to adopt a n irrational strategy that tends to

undermine US national security (ibid.: 134-58). Layne himself gives the answer towards the very end

of his book: US policy- makers were not foolish but stayed the course of global hegemony because

that grand strategy has served the interests of the dominant elites that have formed the core of the U.S.

foreign policy establishment since at least the 1930s (ibid.: 200 -1). At the core of the elite coalition

we find, so claims Layne, large capital -intensive corporations that looked to overseas markets and

outward-lo oking investment banks (ibid .). This very insightful conclusion, however, does not as such

follow from Laynes own analysis which until the very end is in fact silent on the role of these elites

and their corporate interests. In the end Laynes analysis states at the surface of the US state and its

personnel, without probing any deeper into US state-society relations.

What is an unsubstantiated conclusion at the end of Laynes analysis is in fact a starting point for

ours. That is we seek to uncover the social, and in particular class, origins of state power and of, in this

case, geopolitical strategy. We will thus below elaborate our own historical materialist approach to US

grand strategy formation.

Class strategy, hegemonic projects and grand strateg y

In this paper we argue that variations in US grand strategy can only be made sense of when

geopolitical strategies are seen as internally related to the social relations and practices constituting

global capitalism (see, e.g., Rupert 1993; Wood 2003; Van Apeldoorn forthcoming; cf. Harvey 2003;

Callinicos 2007, 2009). Building upon work done within IPE on transnational class formation (Van

der Pijl 1998; Van Apeldoorn 2004), class here is seen as the critical causal nexus connecting

geopolitical strategy formation to the structures of (global) capitalist accumulation.

We therefore need to integrate both structure and agency in our account of capitalist class rule,

which we will do through the neo-Gramscian concept of hegemonic project. Following Gramsci

(1971) , Jessop (1990: 208) refers to a successful hegemonic project as involving the mobilization of support behind a concrete, national-popular program of action which asserts a general interest in the

pursuit of objectives that explicitly or implicitly advance the long-term interests of the hegemonic

class (fraction). It is thus that a successful hegemonic project in the longer run will ha ve to be linked

to a successful accumulation strategy, that is, a strategy for the realis ation of a specific growth

model complete with its various extra -economic preconditions (Ibid.: 198). The rise of a new

hegemonic project, however, does not necessarily have to coincide with the rise of a new accumulation

strategy (Ibid.: 346). As Jessop points out, it is important to see that while they may overlap partially

and / or mutually condition each other, accumulation strategy and hegemonic project are not identical:


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While accumulation strategies are directly concerned with economic expansion on a national orinternational scale, hegemonic projects can be concerned principally with various non-economicobjectives (even if economically conditioned and economically relevant). The latter mightinclude military success, social reform, political stability or moral regeneration (ibid.: 208).

In the short run, then, given specific conjunctures, there may well be a dissociation or

inconsistency between them (Ibid.).

We argue that in understanding the variations in US imperialism we also need to examine those

specific conjunctures in which one hegemonic project may take the place of another without

necessarily being linked to a concomitant change in accumulation strategy . However, we stress with

Jessop that in order to succeed hegemonic projects need to advance the interests of a dominant class

fraction, and thus to be articulated to a successful accumulation strategy whether old or new. Success

is not guaranteed, but seeking to advance these interests is what a hegemonic project is about. Wemaintain that a hegemonic project moreover also necessarily has a geopolitical dimension, even if

formulated within the national context, especially in the case of a leading capitalist state such as the

US.

As states are key in providing the preconditions for capitalist markets to develop and for

capitalist accumulation to take place (Van Apeldoorn and Horn 2007) any national or transnational

capitalist class is dependent upon the application of state power both nationally and internationally

(e.g., Wood 2003). Hegemonic projects, as expressive of underlying class interests, will therefore have

to articulate not just a vision about how to establish control over subordinate social groups in a

domestic context (i.e. a national-popular programme), but also with respect to world order and the

position of the respective state within it. This is not to imply that geopolitical strategy is in any way

determined by objective class interests. On the contrary, these interests must be articulated politically

and ideologically, and their possible translation into state policy must be seen as a contingent outcome

of social and political struggles. Our claim is, however, that the content of these political and

discursive practices is shaped by the social position of the actors engaging in it and by underlying

social relations.

It is thus from this perspective that this paper interprets US grand strategy and variations thereof

as a dimensions of (successive) hegemonic projects for effectuating and reproducing the power of the

US ruling class, that is, as seeking to serve the long-term interests of the (hegemonic fractions) of the

US capitalist class. 3 In understanding the formation of these projects, we also, following Jessops

3 Although focusing upon the geopolitical component of hegemonic projects, we still in this article employ the

concept of hegemonic project as referring to a national programme inasmuch as it is oriented to the advancementof dominant class fractions that seek both elite and popular consent within the US rather than transnational orglobal civil society. We thus do not refer to US hegemony as its hegemony within the international system orworld order, or the extent to which a particular national hegemonic project has also been articulatedtransnationally (cf. Van Apeldoorn 2004). Through our analysis of the linkages to transnational capital we do


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strategic -relational theory of the state, take into account the states so-called strategic selectivity ,

that is, its structural set-up (institutional form) in turn the product of past strategies of and struggles

between social forces which makes the state apparatus more open to some social classes and groups

than to others and tends to select or favour their strategies over others (ibid.: 261). Here, with Domhoff

(2009), we may note in particular the openness of the US political system to the corporate

community and its strategies, and hence the particular form of the US capitalist state in which

capitalist class hegemony is secured through an almost complete dominance of the policy-planning

process.

HEGEMONIC PROJECTS AND POST- COLD WAR VARIATIONS OF US

IMPERIALISM: COMPARING THE GRAND STRATEGIES OF CLINTON, BUSH

AND OBAMA

As indicated US grand strategy is not simply a foreign policy strategy formulated in isolation of other

policy domains, rather we propose that it must be viewed as part of what is often an overall,

comprehensive grand strategy for seeking to secure the long-term interests of the hegemonic

fractions of the US capitalist class. The concept of hegemonic project here allows us to analyse to

what extent and how grand strategy in its geopolitical sense is linked to capitalist class strategy. To the

extent that this link can be established the agency involved in formulating grand strategies must thusbe seen as going beyond that of the actual policy-makers but ultimately rooted in dominant social

(class) forces. Grand strategy is by definition the product of agency, but agency always within its

structural context. Continuity and change of grand strategy must thus be seen as the outcome of the

dialectical interplay of structure and agency over time. It is important here not to simply identify

structure with continuity and agency with change. It is true that structures cannot change themselves,

which is why agency has to come in, but agency can both transform current structures as well as

reproduce them, thus producing continuity. Without such reproduction the structures would cease to

exist. Hence continuity is equally dependent upon agency. Although reproduction of structures mayoften take place unconsciously, in politics a lot of conscious effort is spent on seeking to reproduce

certain structures as part of strategic conduct. It is this, then, that we have to keep in mind when below

analysing the variations of US grand strategy since the end of the Cold War. Both Marxist (e.g., Wood

2003) and non-Marxist literature (e.g., Layne 2006) emphasising the continuity of US grand strategy

tend to take this as a structural given rather than as something that involves continuous efforts on the

focus our attention on the transnational constitution of US national projects, but we focus less on its transnationaleffects; although they are part of the changing strategic context that we describe, a more comprehensive analysisof these dynamics would merit additional research that falls outside the scope of this paper.


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parts of those actors who stand to benefit with the continuation of current structures or identify

themselves with these interests. It is thus that we will now first briefly describe the historical

continuities of US grand strategy since at least 1940, continuities that we will interpret as structures

(actively) reproduced by relevant strategic actors and as corresponding to what the US capitalist class

elite has perceived to serve its long-term interests.

The continuity of US imperialism

In contrast to what Mearsheimer (2001) and other neo-realists have argued, the weight of historical

evidence clearly points to the fact that US hegemony has not been restricted to the Western

Hemisphere, but has from the turn of the last century onwards expanded outwards, moving fromregional to global hegemony (Lafeber 1994, 1998; Heiss 2002; Layne 2006; Williams 2009).

According to Layne (2006: 3) the latter has become the deliberate strategic goal of the US since the

1940s such that [t]he story of its grand strategy over the past decades is one of expansion. In our

view, this expansion is inextricably bound up with the expansion of US capital and the promotion of a

liberal capitalist world order with a dominant or rather hegemonic position of the US and of US capital

within it This, then, is the essence of what following Williams (2009) we call the imperialism of the

Open Door , or the non -colonial imperial policy first explicitly formulated in 1899 (in the so-called

Open Door notes concerning the opening up of the Chinese market to US capital) regarding theconditions under which Americas preponderant economic power would extend the American system

throughout the world without the embarrassment and inefficiency of traditional colonialism (ibid.:

50). Indeed, such an extension of the American system as a corollary of the expansion of American

capital, can be seen as the overarching goal of Americas Open Door imperialism as both an ideology

and a practice. As Ellen Wood argues, the US is the first true capitalist empire, which rules by

imposing and manipulating the operations of the capitalist market and hence can dispense with

direct political rule or colonial occupation, even if this capitalist power is still crucially backed up by

the coercive (military) power of the US state (Wood 2003: 21).As an ideology or world view the Open Door may be seen as consisting of the following five key

interrelated and partly overlapping elements: economic expansionism; promotion of a liberal world

order : democracy promotion, the externalisation and globalisation of evil , and US exceptionalism

(cf. Bacevich 2009: 319-20). We will briefly discuss each of these elements in turn:

Economic expansionism

With the foundations for it laid at the end of the 19 th century when the US for the first time turned

overseas expansion into a key foreign policy objective (Lafeber 1994) , this first and crucial element of


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the Open Door has been premised from the beginning on the firm conviction, even dogmatic belief,

that Americas domestic well being depends upon such sustained, ever increasing overseas economic

expansion (Williams 2009: 15). It was this belief that informed part of Roosevelts strategy to

overcome the crisis of the 1930s (ibid.: 168-74), in part informed the decision to enter World War II as

well as shaped much of its Cold War strategy, in particular vis--vis Europe (Van der Pijl 1984,

Lafeber 1994, Layne 2006, Williams 2009);

Promotion of free markets and a liberal world order (economic openness)

In order to enable economic expansionism, foreign markets need to be opened up to US capital, which

inter alia means that any protective barriers be broken down and free markets and freedom of

enterprise are spread by putting in place the necessary political and instit utional conditions around the

globe. As Woodrow Wilson asserted in 1912: If America is not to have free enterprise, then she canhave freedom of no sort whatever (quoted in Williams 2009: 58). This notion has subsequently been

extended to cover much of the whole globe, that is to say, that US policy-making elites came to

believe that the prosperity of US business (and thus of the economy) was dependent on not only

having access to foreign markets but also on European and Asia themselves having free marke t

systems . The US thus has a vested interest in other states having the right kind of government

that is, governments that avoid autarky and mercantilism, indeed one might say, more autonomous

development (see on this Chomsky 2004: 15, 86, 97), and embrace the incorporation into an open -

American dominated -international economy (Layne 2006: 34). Any state that would thus challengethis order and adopt the wrong kind of policies, limiting US expansion, is thus seen as a danger (ibid.,

see also Chomsky 2004; Williams 2009). At the level of world order this of course also implies

promoting, and acting as the guarantor of, international regimes cum global governance supporting

this US dominated liberal world economy;

Promotion of democracy (political openness)

Democracy promotion has been a key plank of the ideology underpinning US grand strategy since

Wilsons call to make the world safe for democracy (Ninkovich 1999). For US grand strategy-makers democracy means not any kind of democracy but US- style liberal democracy, which means

above all that it is seen as inextricably connected with individualism, private property, and a

capitalist economy (Williams 2009: 9). In this sense, the first two objectives in practice (rather than

rhetoric) really trump democracy promotion; or rather the latter is defined in such a way that it is fully

compatible with them. Where democracy is not compatible with US notions of economic freedom or

otherwise with US imperialist interests, the US of course has never shown much restraint in either

supporting the most brutal dictatorships or opposing real democratic advancement (e.g., Chomsky

1998). The point, however, is that ideologically, its grand strategy has been premised on the liberal


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belief that democracy and free markets go hand in hand and that together these American ideals are

congruent with American interests;

The externalisation of evil

According to Williams (2009: 15), the flip-side of the belief th at Americas prosperity is dependent

upon the outside world (i.e., a US-dominated liberal world economy), is that that same outside world

also becomes to be blamed for any lack of the good life. Indeed, in line with a Manichean Puritanism

evil becomes externalised, and, as Layne (2006: ch. 6) argues, globalised and deterritorialised. As a

corollary of its Open Door imperialism, defining its interests as global and in ideological terms of

seeking to promote a liberal world order, the US also tends to see potential threats to its security

everywhere around the globe inasmuch as any state, group or movement seen as not to accept this

order can be seen as a threat to that order and is hence to be dealt with as a security threat. 4

US exceptionalism

The notion that the US is somehow exceptional compared to other great powers in that is it not merely

driven by (power) interests but equally by ideology, or indeed by a unique divine mission to remake

the world has been part of its identity and outlook since the nations founding (Heiss 2002: 520).

The project of remaking others in its own image (ibid.) was at first restricted to North America

(Manifest Destiny ) but later, in ever widening circles, came to be include first to the whole Western

hemisphere and in the 20 th century, and especially from the 1940s onwards, the whole world (Kagan

2003: 85-88; Layne 2006; Williams 2009). Williams has described this aspect of the US (elite) world

view as a posture of moral and ideological superiority: with God on its side America could go about

extending the area of freedom and perform the noble work of teaching inferiors to appreciate the

blessings they already enjoyed but were inclined to overlook. In turn, that would prepare them for the

better days to follow under American leadership (Williams 2009: 59).

Taking these five elements together it is clear how this ideology of the Open Door has made global

hegemony a strategic requirement. Pace neo-realism, this, then has not been in order to survive in an

anarchic world, that is, due to any objective security needs of the US, but in order to achieve its Open

Door aims (Layne 2006: 35). The same strategic objective has also necessitated the build-up of a huge

military machine, with the US seeking to achieve and maintain military superiority over any potential

rival, using military power to create a stable international order that is safe for the economic Open

4 It is for this reason then that policy-makers also tend to believe in their own rhetoric even if at the same timewe may also recognise that such securitisation serves a legitimation function in the sense that these threats areconstructed in order to f urther wider imperialist goals (that is, it can be seen as an ideology in the negativesense of hiding real interests). These two aspects may very well be united within the same individual. Thisthen makes it ideological rather than mere instrumental.


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Door (ibid.: 125). Given these global commitments or, as the Pentagon prefers to call them

responsibilities, the US is also constantly forced to expand the geographical scope of its strategic

commitments (.) ever extending its security commitments even farther into the periphery (ibid.

128).

We would contend that the historical evidence as presented by Layne and others (e.g., Lafeber

1994; Williams 2009) indeed clearly shows continuity in US grand strategy since World War II and to

a large extent before. The question that lies before us though is how to explain this continuity. We

submit that a historical materialist approach focusing on its class origins allows us provide a much

deeper and more comprehensive explanation of this strategy and underlying world view. We thus

interpret the above foreign policy ideology as a class ideology , an outcome that is to be explained in

terms of class agency ensuring that the right strategy continues to be foll owed, and that where it is

threatened to be derailed, to keep or bring it back on track. As this right strategy therefore always has

to be reproduced and renewed, it will also tend to vary over time depending on the exact constellation

and balance of class forces, the wider structural context in which these forces operate, and how, in

light of this context, these interpret their interests, and how to best achieve them.

Thus while the world view of the Open Door provides the overall ideological framework of US

capitalist imperialism since World War II (and to a large extent since the turn of the last century), the

concrete grand strategy pursued since then also shows considerable variation within this overarching

framework. This variation is brought about through agency, but, linking agency to structure, must also

be seen as rooted in more structural if politically and ideologically mediated changes within US

capitalism and its position within the global political economy. It is through the concept of hegemonic

projects, and the way these are, and the extent to which these are articulated to a successful

accumulation strategy, that we seek to make sense of these changes.

US grand strategy under Clinton: neoliberal globalisation

Neoliberalism is essentially a project of restoring capitalist class hegemony after the economic and

social crisis of the 1970s by liberating capital from its post-war constraints through a programme of

marketisation and privatisation (Harvey 2005). As an accumulation strategy neoliberalism has been

bound up with the processes of globalisation and above all financialisation, that is, it has been linked

to the interests and growth strategies of the most globalized transnational corporations, and even more

strongly with that of global financial capital (Van der Pijl 1998; Van Apeldoorn 2002; Dumnil and

Lvy, 2001). Although the Reagan administration (1980-1989) is rightly credited with its pioneering

role in the rise of neoliberalism (e.g. Harvey 2005), the neoliberal project was consolidated, deepened,

and indeed globalised under the Clinton presidency (1993-2001). As such, we argue, the evolution of


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US grand strategy in the Clinton era must be interpreted within the context of a consolidating

neoliberal project that in the 1990s became hegemonic both within US and a US-centred transnational

civil society. The grand strategy into which this translated marked both a continuation of US capitalist

imperialism as well as a change with respect to the particular neoliberal form it came to adopt. What

we will call a strategy of neoliberal globalisation must thus be viewed as part of a wider neoliberal

hegemonic project.

Underlining the continuity with the Open Door, Clintons National Security Strategy (NSS) 5 of

1995 de fined promoting prosperity at home in terms of a policy of free trade and to press for open

and equal U.S. access to foreign markets and argued furthermore that this goal was inextricably

linked to the USs other two primary foreign policy objectives, promoting democracy and

enhancing our security (White House 1995: 7. i). The US, called upon to lead to organize the

forces of freedom and progress (White House 1998: 1), must thus, as the 1998 NSS put it, promote

democracy and free markets with the two equated even to the extent that Clintons two NSS

documents consistently refer not to democracies but to (the community of) market democracies (White

House 1995, 1998).

Although thus reproducing the Open Door world view, what was distinctive about the grand

strategy of Clinton, was its translation of that view in a neoliberal globalisation offensive (cf. Van der

Pijl 2006: ch. 8) in which not only free trade but also the freedom of (US) capital were pursued with

renewed vigour, and without the national and international restraints that characterised what Van der

Pijl (1984) has called the corporate liberal post -war era that lasted until the Reagan administration.

The disembedded liberalism of the 1990s constituted a global marketisation project that critically

included the liberalisation of financial markets. It was thus that US imperialism in the 1990s came to

operate primarily through its control over the key institutions of neoliberal global governance or what

David Harvey dubbed the Wall Street-Treasury- IMF complex (Harvey 2003: 18 ; see also Gowan

1999). Geopolitically, the main difference with Cold War administrations, including Reagans, was

that US imperialism was no longer constrained by the containment and ultimate defeat of the Soviet

Union. The end of the Cold War and the unipolar moment (Krauthammer 1991) it appeared to

create had created a historic opportunity to achieve what had been the overarching goal of US grandstrategy since 1940, that is, global hegemony within a liberal capitalist world order. And while the

Bush Sr. administration (1989-1993) still seemed more confused than following any clear post-Cold

War grand strategy in this respect (LaFeber 1994: 752, see also White House 1989), the Clinton

administration pro-actively seized this opportunity, and its foreign policy-makers and intellectuals in

surrounding networks formulated a new mission for the unipole: a US-centred and US-led

globalisation premised on and propagating a neoliberal agenda of opening and expanding markets

5 Arguable the National Security Strategies as formulated by successive administrations is the mostcomprehensive public statement of US grand strategy, hence this key foreign policy document will serve as ourpoint of departure in the following analyses of US grand strategy.


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(LaFeber 2002: 543; cf. Dumbrell 2002: 50). Indeed, no US president before or after Clinton extolled

the virtues of globalization, calling upon the US and the world to embrace the inexorable logic of

globalization (Clinton 1999).

Although this globalisation agenda was ideologically premised on the notion of liberal

democratic states realising mutual gains through peaceful cooperation, Clinton, in true Wilsonian

fashion, was very well aware that his liberal internationalist policy of promoting market democracies

still had to be backed up by US military might (ibid., LaFeber 1994: 767). And military force,

whether under the guise of humanitarian intervention or otherwise, was indeed used by Clinton in or

against Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, and, most massively, Serbia. The latter war,

launched without a UN mandate but in the multilateral context of NATO, was arguably moreover

fought with the context of a broader geopolitical strategy centred on NATO expansion and increasing

penetration of US power into former Soviet territory (Cafruny 2009; Van der Pijl 2006: ch. 8).

Furthermore, Clintons alleged foreign policy doctrine of democratic enlargement (Brinkley 1997),

above all implied a more coercive stance against rogue states (Dumbrell 20 02), the Clinton

administrations version of the externalisation of evil that became increasingly dominant in its

foreign policy discourse towards the end of the 1990s.

Nevertheless, the Clinton presidency was not always decisive in its use of force (ibid.: 52), which

was moreover mostly restricted to airstrikes and so-called low-intensity warfare. Geopolitical rivalries

were also more muted in the post- Cold War 1990s and Clintons neoliberal globalisation strategy

generally emphasized consent promoting good governance through Washington -based

international institutions over coercion. In this context, though unilateralist tendencies were growing

especially in Clintons second term, multilateralism was still a favoured concept and foreign policy

instrument within Clintons variety of US imperialism, especially in the economic area (Dumbrell

2002: 49, 53; Skidmore 2005), with the creation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995

celebrated as a major foreign policy success (e.g., White House 1998: 34).

In sum, the grand strategy pursued by the Clinton administration in the 1990s reproduced the

Open Door imperialism of the Cold War era but did so with a new neoliberal twist oriented towards

the promotion of globalisation as a programme of global marketisation and commodification, withmultilateralism and global governance as primary instruments, even if still backed up by the threat

- and indeed regular application - of military force. As indicated, we interpret this first post- Cold War

variety of US imperialism as the geopolitical dimension of a broader neoliberal hegemonic project that

sought to advance the long-term interests of the US capitalist class.

As the 20 th century came to a close the contradictions and limits of Clintons neoliberal

globalisation strategy and the wider hegemonic project from which it emanated became increasingly

manifest (for a more elaborate discussion see De Graaff and Van Apeldoorn forthcoming). Internally,

the atomisation and social disintegration that neoliberalism engenders has increasingly undermined the


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social order that sustains capital accumulation and thus called for some kind of restoration of that

order (see Harvey, 2003: 15-7). But also globally (i.e. externally) the transnational hegemony of

neoliberalism had been weakening, with various social forces around the world increasingly resisting

the discipline imposed by neoliberal globalisation and challenging US imperialism as a result (van der

Pijl 2006). Moreover, the grand strategy of Clinton aimed at promoting neoliberal globalisation was

also reaching its geopolitical limits as the dynamics of global capital accumulation were increasingly

shifting the centre of gravity of the global economy away from the Atlantic, with rival centres of

accumulation in East Asia (especially China) threatening the geopolitical and geo-economic pre-

eminence of the US, thus underlining the limits of a strategy that had aimed at incorporating these

potential contenders into the US-dominated neoliberal order. With consent for the latter hence waning

both domestically and internationally; a more coercive strategy increasingly came to the fore a

coercion deemed necessary to hold on to US primacy as premised upon the Open Door.

US grand strategy under Bush: the neoconservative turn

As argued in more detail elsewhere (De Graaff and Van Apeldoorn forthcoming), so-called

neoconservative intellectuals had been promoting such an alternative project, and in particular a more

coercive US foreign policy, throughout the 1990s through a dense network of think tanks and policy

advocacy groups with the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) becoming the focal point of

the formulation of a new hegemonic project and a concomitant grand strategy. It was only in the

context of the rising contradictions and limits of neoliberalism described above and after the shock of

9/11, however, that this comprehensive programme could win hegemonic appeal within the US and

could to a large extent be implemented by the administration of George W. Bush (2001-2009). Before

examining this new neoconservative grand strategy in more detail, let us first look at the broader

underlying hegemonic project.

Although neoconservatism has much in common with neoliberalism in particular in its aim at

preserving capitalist class power through strengthening the market as the arbiter of social life it alsogoes beyond neoliberalism in that it explicitly recognises that the price mechanism alone cannot

sufficiently provide order in society. It is the overriding concern with order, and the willingness to

back up that order through coercion, both domestically and internationally, that distinguishes the

neoconservative from the neoliberal hegemonic project. As Harvey (2005: 82). writes:

Neoconservatism [...] has reshaped neoliberal practices in two fundamental respects: first, inits concern for order as an answer to the chaos of individual interests, and second, in itsconcern for an overweening morality as the necessary social glue to keep the body politic

secure in the face of internal and external dangers.


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This neoconservative answer to the social and (geo-)political contradictions of the neoliberal project,

has been translated into a distinct US grand strategy, that is, a new variety of US imperialism,

modifying the neoliberal project while continuing to be premised on the same accumulation strategy. 6

The grand strategy pursued by the administration of Bush Jr., like that of its predecessors was

once more was firmly embedded within and thus reproduced the basic tenets of Open Door

imperialism. At the same time, however, it represented in several respects, a more extreme or

radicalised version of it (Wood 2003; Callinicos 2003). Yet this distinctiveness should not lead us to

ignore the strong continuities. Thus the notorious NSS of 2002 starts by formulating the main

objectives of US grand strategy in strikingly familiar language. After noting that [t] he great struggles

of the twentieth century (.) ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom and a single

sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise. (White House 2002:

unnumbered page), the document outlin es a strategy based on a distinctly American internationalism

() to help make the world not just safer but better (ibid.: 1). Apart from reflecting the discourse of

American exceptionalism what then follows clearly reproduces the ideology of the economic and

political Open Door, invoking the goals of political and economic freedom , and seeking to ignite a

new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade and expand the circle of

development by opening societies and building the infrastructure of democracy (ibid.: 1-2). Here the

opening of societies above all means to open [them] to commerce and investment (ibid.: 22). As the

NSS summarises: [f]ree markets and free trade are key priorities of our national security strategy

(ibid.: 23). Next to continuing USs long -standing policies in this respect, the specific policies

advocated in this realm, policies such as lowering taxation of business and creating efficient capital

markets, and generally to strengthen market incentives and market institutions also reflect a

continuation of the Clintonite neoliberal agenda. For Bush, this for instance included a continuing

strong commitment to institutions such as the WTO and its newly launched Doha Round (White

House 2006: 25-7).

Although Bushs foreign policy has often been singled out for its idealistic democracy

promotion and freedom agenda this as such was no more than a vigorous reaffirmation of the Open

Door (cf. Monten 2005). What made the US grand strategy of the G.W. Bush administrationdistinctive was the extent to which it openly promoted and applied the use of military force to achieve

Open Door aims, or, differently put: how it emphasised coercion over consent (Harvey 2003). This can

be seen in the following four elements of the grand strategy pursued under Bush. First, with regard to

the so-called Bush doctrine, it was not that the US had not implicitly reserved the right to strike pre -

emptively in the past, and indeed had also done so on several occasions, it was the blatant openness

with which this was elevated to a new foreign policy doctrine (White House 2002: 5, 15-6) that was

6 For more on the ideas that have informed the neoconservative project see e.g. Kagan and Kristol, 2000;Steltzer, 2004; Hurst, 2005.


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new and that reveals the distinctive character of Bushs neoconservative varie ty of US imperialism.

Crucially of course, the new doctrine was swiftly and most destructively applied with the invasion

and occupation of Iraq. Second, whereas global hegemony has been a long-standing goal of US grand

strategy, perceiving that now that a unipolar position had effectively been achieved (ibid.: 1),

maintaining US primacy became an explicit commitment. This commitment was defined above all in

terms of US military supremacy, which had to be maintained beyond challenge (ibid.: 29). Third,

accelerating and deepening a trend that started under Clinton s second term , the Bush administration

embraced a much more brazen unilateralism in defence of US primacy (see Skidmore 2005). Finally,

the familiar element of democracy promotion was now above all translated into the objective of

regime change by military means.

These elements were discursively articulated, and legitimated by, the concept of the war on

terror , a clear exam ple of the externalisation of evil that as indicated has always been a component

of the Open Door world view, but that now more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, returned

with a vengeance. It enabled the construction of a new and ubiquitous global enemy not a single

political regime or person or religion or ideology. The enemy is terrorism (NSS 2002:5). This

enemy is one of global reach (ibid.: 5) , with threats potentially arising everywhere, thus making the

war on terror into a global enterprise of uncertain duration (ibid.: unnumbered page), indeed what

some neoconservatives have called the fourth world war (the Cold War being the second) that could

last at least a generation (Podhoretz 2004; see also Lynch and Singh 2008). This effective redefinition

of the US security environment legitimated a further militarisation of US foreign policy with the US

defence budget rising under Bush from around US$ 400 billion to over US$ 700 billion and enabled

new forms of international and militar y cooperation such as ad hoc coalitions of the willing (see for

this last point also Krahmann, 2005). Above all, it was under the banner of the war on terror, a war

against militant, radical, Islam that a coercive geopolitical strategy aimed at the global promotion of

US-centred neoliberal acc umulation could be presented as in the general interest of ultimately

fighting for our democratic values and way of life (White House, 2002:31). Indeed, how this coercive

geopolitical strategy was tied up to the overall objective of the expansion of US capital and the

opening of previously closed areas has been illustrated in Iraq.7

As indicated, although reflecting anovel hegemonic project in terms of a national-popular strategy and a political formula to organise

consent and mobilise it in favour of a bellicose foreign policy, the neoconservative project remained

committed to a neoliberal accumulation strategy aimed at the global expansion and deepening of

capitalist markets to the perceived benefit of US transnational capital.

7 This policy was effectively put into practice by the US Coalition Provisional Authority under the leadership of Paul Bremer, which between 2003-2004 abolished many tariffs on imports, capped corporate and income tax,and exposed Iraqi firms to free competition which led to general asset-stripping and the closing down of Iraqifirms.


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To the end of Bushs reign this hegemonic project also ran into its own set of limits and

contradictions. First, although the war on terror was supported by a broad international coalition, the

aggressive unilateralism displayed by the Bush administration and its explicit disregard of

international law and human rights did exactly what both realist and liberal critics warned for, namely

further erode the already waning legitimacy of US hegemony and, even if not provoking overt

counter-balancing, at least encourage new rising powers to become more assertive. Secondly, it has

been precisely the neoconservative continued commitment to a neoliberal strategy that now forcefully

revealed the latters structural limits. Thus the global financial and economic crisis that erupted

towards the end of the Bush presidency demonstrated the bankruptcy of the neoliberal policy

orthodoxy that had first achieved global hegemony under Clinton. The ongoing crisis, has both

economically and politically further weakened US power and discredited its global policies. This

formed the structural global context in which Obama and his administration came to power in search

of a new and more effective strategy. To what extent they are succeeding, and to what extent it

represents real change, is another matter.

US grand strategy under Obama: towards a new hegemonic project?

Although some commentators have characterised Obamas foreign policy as realist as opposed to

the neoconse rvative idealism of Bush (Quinn 2009; Kitchen 2009 ) a closer analysis of the

unfolding geopolitical strategy of the current administration in fact shows that it, like that of its

predecessor, continues in the tradition of Wilsonian power politics that has been characteristic of

Americas imperialism of the Open Door (Layne 2006: 9). Already as a presidential candidate Obama

(2007a), in clear Wilsonian tradition, called for a renewal of American leadership. In an

unequivocally exceptionalist rhetoric, Obama warned that t o see American power in terminal

decline is to ignore America s great promise an d historic purpose in the world (ibid.: 3), which is to

lead not only for ourselves but also for the common good (ibid.:15). 8 In the same Foreign Affairs

article, he made clear that renewing American leadership above all meant renewing and rebuilding theUS military as [a] strong military is, more than anyth ing, necessary to sustain peace (ibid.: 5). Peace

here still means a Pax Americana , a global capitalist empire of which the US, with its overwhelming

military superiority, continues to act as the guarantor and enforcer. As Obamas National Security

Strategy of 2010 unequivocally states: there should be no dou bt: the United States of America will

continue to underwrite global security (White House 2010: 1). So the hegemonic ambition remains a

global one and also defined in what Layne calls milieu goals (rather than just mere ly maintaining the

8 For more exceptionalist discourse see e.g. Obama 2009c [Oslo speech], cf. Kitchen 2009 who offers anopposite interpretation.


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balance of power): to shape an international order that promotes a just peace with an open

international economic system defined as an enduring American interest (ibid.: 5, 7). The US,

uniquely suited to seize the promise of globalisation, and having in part produce d it (ibid.: 5) remains

committed to opening markets around the globe [that] will promote global competition and

innovation and will be crucial to our prosperity (ibid.: 32).

Obamas unfolding grand strategy shows not only strong continuities with the O pen Door

imperialism of the past seven decades or so, but also with the particular neoconservative variety of that

imperialism as pursued by Bush Jr., that is to say, in its continued relative emphasis on coercion

Obama is more the heir of the last Republican than of the last Democratic president. Already in 2007,

in what is far from a repudiation of the Bush doctrine, Obama, while also emphasizing the need for

international support , added that I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect

the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened (ibid.

6), a position he re-affirmed in office in his National Security Strategy (White House 2010: 22) where

threats are seen as coming from rogue states allied to terrorists and from rising powers that could

challenge both America and the international foundation of liberal democracy (ibid.: 2). If we look at

how this strategy is implemented in practice then we can observe that the war on terror though that

phrase is usually no longer used is only intensifying under Obama. While he started a partial

withdrawal from Iraq, the effort has switched to Afghanistan and Pakistan, a shift that in fact had

already commenced under Robert Gates when he was still Bushs Secretary of Defence, and whose re -

appointment in that position by Obama underlines the continuity . To disrupt, dismantle, and defeat

Al-Qaida and its violent extremist affiliates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and around the world (ibid.:

19) remains a key plank of the Americas security strategy. Since Obama came into office the number

US troops in Afghanistan almost trebled. Moreover, the theatre of war has been quietly expanded. As

of July 2010 the number of pre -empti ve , illegal and unacknowledged drone strikes (bombings from

unmanned airplanes) into Pakistani territory carried out by the Obama administration is more than

double the total carried out under Bush, producing a record number of casualties (amongst whom

many civilians, New America Foundation 2010; Entous 2010). In addition, Obama has ordered an

expansion of covert warfare, with Special Operations forces now secretly operating in 75 countries(up from 60 in 2009). Next to more money being spent on these operations, according to military

officials quoted in a Washington Post report this part of the military has much better access to the

White House than wa s the case under Bush, with the Obama administration willing to get aggressive

much more quickly (DeYoun g and Jaffe 2010). 9 As Robert Kagan, a key neoconservative author,

summarises approvingly: [a]lthough the Obama administration may be more generous i n providing

9 These Special Operations include unilateral strikes, training of local counter-terrorism units and jointoperations with the latter. Yemen is a recent example of a country where all three types are practiced (DeYoungand Jaffe 2010).


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legal defense to captured terrorists than the Bush administration, it also makes a greater effort to

assassinate them, thus obviating the need for trials (Kagan 2010 ).

Although the war on terror goes on unabated, there are at least two significant differences with

Bushs grand strategy that may point to yet a new variety of US imperialism, and both these elements

can be read as a direct response to the limits and contradictions of neoconservative imperialism as they

became manifest in the final Bush years. The first is that the Obama administration does tend to

recognise the limits of US power a bit more clearly in a world that is arguably now more multipolar

than unipolar. This leads to a call for more representative international institutions, giving a broader

voice and greater responsibilities for emerging powers ( White House 2010: 3) and for more

diplomacy and engagement with both allies and hostile powers, seeking to [galvanize] the collective

action that can serve common interests (ibid.: 3). Although this liberal internationalist agenda, fitting

well with the one world idealism of the democratic tradition (Van der Pijl 2006) might above all be a

call to others to follow US leadership, it also in part means a shift back to the discourse if not always

the practice of multilateralism that had been largely abandoned by Bush. The renewed search for

consent that we have observed in Obamas first year, however, is one that is borne out of the fact that

the US has only few cards left, and hence can be seen as part of a conscious attempt to restore some of

the soft power so obviously squandered by th e previous administration. This is crucially different

from the neoliberal globalisation strategy of the Clinton years, which were the heyday for the power of

both the US and of neoliberal ideology. In short, inasmuch as multilateralism is making somewhat of a

comeback, it is out of weakness rather than strength.

The second and arguably more important new element is the recognition of the importance of the

economy and the need for a renewed long-term growth strategy. Indeed, striking is the number of

pages spent in Obamas NSS at what traditional IR scholars would regard as d omestic issues, in

particular the efforts to sustain the recovery from the 2008-2009 recession : At the center of our efforts

is a commitment to renew our economy, which serves as the wellspring of American power (White

House 2010: 2) Although, the link be tween prosperity seen as dependent upon an open global

economy and security has always been at the heart of the Open Door, this link has now gotten

renewed attention in the context of the crisis of the neoliberal model. It has been the current crisis thathas clearly pressed home to the Obama administration the message that any hegemonic project, and

any project of US imperialism, has to be premised on sustained economic growth (capital

accumulation) in order to succeed. However, the extent to which this should also entail a new

accumulation strategy and what such a strategy should look like is something that the Obama

administration thus far has remained rather vague on.

In any case, and in spite of these differences with the Bush era, it is too soon to say whether or

not the limited shift in US grand strategy that is, a change within very strong continuities that we

can observe under Obama thus far is reflective of a new hegemonic project in the making, a project


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through which the US ruling class seeks to reproduce its power at home and internationally after the

crisis. One problem is of course that with a renewed and increased fear for a so- called double dip

the crisis appears to be still far from over.

The future course of US grand strategy under Obama and his successors is not predetermined but

will depend on the dialectical interplay of structure and agency. Having described the grand strategies

as pursued by the three administrations interpreted as variations of US Open Door imperialism and

having placed them in their structural context, we should now turn to the role of agency, that is to the

specific actors and their social positions involved in making US grand strategy.

NETWORKS OF CAPITALIST CLASS POWER: THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF US

POST- COLD WAR STRATEGY

In the previous section we have seen how US grand strategy since the end of the Cold War continued

the long-standing tradition of US Open Door imperialism but also showed some significant variation

as it evolved from the Clinton to the Bush and to the Obama administrations. We have suggested that

both this continuity and the changes within it can be explained in terms of the capitalist class strategy

underpinning it. In order to understand how and why this class strategy has come to inform US grand

strategy we have to empirically examine the social origins of the variations of US grand strategy as

observed above. As indicated, our theoretical premise is that the capitalist class cannot simply secure

its hegemony by relying on the state s structural dependence on capital (accumulation), but has to

involve pro-active class agency to articulate and propagate its interests and translate it into

governmental policy. If this is the case then we should be able to trace links between those who

formulate and implement US grand strategy that is, the relevant state managers within the US

government on the one hand and capitalist class interests, operationalised as dominant sections of

US capital on the other. In other words, identifying the networks of actors and institutions behind

each administration through which we claim that capitalist class agency is exercised.

In particular we will examine and compare the corporate and civil society links of relevant

members of each of the three administrations Clinton, Bush and Obama in order to see to what

extent the grand strategy pursued by these administrations is in effect formulated by a set of actors

who are not just arguably structurally bound by the interests of capital, but also embedded in networks

that tie them personally to these interests. For this purpose we have undertaken a network analysis for

which we selected what we regard as the key foreign policy makers within each administration at the

start of each presidency (Clinton: 1993, Bush: 2001, Obama: 2009). Foreign policy here must be

understood broadly as to involve all those policies with a distinct external dimension, that is, as


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relating to policy-instruments through which the US exercises its global power. Thus next to the

President, the Secretaries of State and Defence and their Deputies, the National Security Advisor, this

for instance also includes the Secretary of the Treasury, and other key foreign economic policy-

makers. We only included the highest level cabinet members (secretary and deputy secretary) and

White House cabinet-level staff, as well as some key influential advisors (both formal such as Council

of Economic Advisors and informal behind the scene adviso rs), giving a total N of 30 per

administration. For each of these individual actors, we collected biographical data of their (previous)

state positions, corporate affiliations, affiliations with think tanks, research institutions, club

membership, academic affiliations, educational background and demographic data. Data were

collected from: US governmental websites (e.g. White House, Pentagon), official websites of the

individuals affiliations (e.g. company-, university-, think tanks- websites), Annual Reports of affiliated

companies, Business Week, and the International Relations Center - Right Web. 10 In this paper we will

focus on the corporate affiliations and on the institutional affiliations (with e.g. think tanks, policy

advocacy groups, research institutes etc.).

Corporate Affiliations

For the analysis of the composition of the corporate links of the core members of each administrations

grand strategy makers we included all affiliations (i.e. formal positions within a company, including

both executive, founding, and non-executive, advisory positions) until and including the year in which

a person entered the respective administration. If we look at the total number of corporate affiliations

at the start of each administration we find that there around 50 corporate affiliations in the network of

each administration. 11 Divided over 30 individuals in each case this shows that all three

administrations were well embedded in extensive corporate networks, that is to say that many key

policy-makers had important ties to the US corporate community. Both the high number of total

corporate affiliations and the fact that it stays more or less constant over the three administrations are

an important indication of continuity in terms of the corporate ties of US government, indicating thedominance of the corporate community and capitalist class over the US policy planning process

(Domhoff 2009).

10 The data collection is based on desk research and not on interviews / surveys of the actors, hence only thoseaffiliations that are made public are included, the total number of affiliations might hence be underestimated.11 This is an estimate on the basis of all corporate affiliations in our database, including those for which we lack atime indication. Further research will here have to yield more precise figures.


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When all affiliations were mapped, they were further categorised into sectors 12, Table 1 below

compares the results for each administration in terms of percentages. 13

Table 1: Corporate Affiliations Key Policy Makers - Clinton (1993), Bush (2001), Obama (2009)

Sources: US government (White House, Pentagon), corporate websites, annual reports, university and think tank

websites, Business Week, International Relations Center.

Although this chart shows some interesting variation in terms of the sectoral affiliations of the

different administrations, it also reveals a relative dominance of the finance and consultancy sector as

a recurring feature of these three administrations. Although it is clearly the Clinton administration (in

1993) that was most extensively linked to these sectors, the difference with the Bush administration (in

2001) is not more than 10%. This contrasts the popular (and also academically widely iterated)

perception of the special interests of the military- industrial complex high -jacking the Bush

administration and determining its foreign policy. In fact, quite surprisingly, the latte rs core foreign

12 Here we followed the categories that are used by the Center for Responsive Politics on e.g. US campaignfinancing (REF!!), with the only adjustment that we have separated the Construction and Transportation sectorsfrom the Miscellaneous category and made them an autonomous category.13 Since we only want to include corporate affiliations until a particular time, we could not include those withouta specific time indication. In particular for the Clinton administration this proved difficult, only about half of itstime indications were known. Hence the absolute number of affiliations especially for the Clintonadministration is probably underrepresented. We can therefore only meaningfully compare the affiliations interms of percentages. This gives us a firm preliminary assessment, with further research allowing us to fill outmany of these missing values and adjust for possible inconsistencies.

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Clinton 1993

Bush 2001

Obama 2009


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policy team turns out to have had no formal affiliations with the defence industry at all, in contrast to

both the Clinton and the Obama administration. 14

How should we interpret this variation, and even more importantly lack of variation? It is not

our claim that special sectoral interests determine grand strategy formulation, but that the long-term

continuities of US imperialism, with its particular Open Door character , have to be interpreted in the

context of the advancement of US capital(ist) interests, in particular those fractions of US capital that

are internationally oriented, e.g. (large) transnational corporations, financial capital and insurance,

global business consultancy and international lawyers. The relative dominance of the finance and

consultancy sector in terms of individual ties of core foreign policy makers does seem to corroborate

this claim (and our continuity argument in this respect) .15 The lack of variation between the

administrations also makes clear that changes in the grand strategy cannot be explained merely by the

corporate affiliations of the grand strategy makers as such, which underscores our point that grand

strategy is not so much determined by narrow corporate interests, but rather by more general

capital(ist) interests, or: a more general interest in continued capital accumulation (shared by all

members of the capitalist class). How this general interest is articulated into a more comprehensive

class strategy, that is, a potentially hegemonic project and how the latter is translated into a grand

strategy tends to differ not only according to changes in the structural context (both domestically and

internationally) as described above, but also in the way in which this context is interpreted, that is,

mediated by ideas and ideology. We therefore have to examine more precisely which specific (groups

of ) actors are actually involved in the making of grand strategy. Here it has to be pointed out that that

even if there tends to be a strong agreement on the most fundamental issues, some political and

ideological differences, which cannot be simply reduced to divergent material interests, can also be

observed within the US ruling class. The extent to which such differences can also be detected in the

social networks of the key grand strategy makers will be examined below by comparing the networks

of think tank affiliations of the three administrations.

14 Cf. De Graaff and Van Apeldoorn, forthcoming, in which the network of neoconservative intellectuals andadvisors associated with the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) were analysed. This did generate asignificant number of defence affiliations, illustrating that indeed there were such affiliated interests behind thebroader neoconservative project, yet that these actors even if influential - did not necessarily become the coreforeign policy makers; underscoring our claim that Bushs grand strategy cannot be interpreted as a simpleputch by crony capitalists.15 In particular with respect to the finance sector this might also explain part of the continuity in terms of theneoliberal accumulation strategy underpinning the grand strategies and hegemonic projects. However, somecaution is asked for here, since a similar pattern might very well be found prior to the neoliberal accumulationstrategy.


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Graph 2: Think Tank Affiliations Bush 2001 Only Nodes with >1 Degree

Graph 3: Think Tank Affiliationa Obama 2009 Only Nodes with >1 Degree

Sources: US government (White House, Pentagon), corporate websites, annual reports, university and think tank

websites, Business Week, International Relations Center.

Bolton

Cheney

Damn

HubbardKhalilzad

Kroszner

LewisMcClellan

O'Neill

Perle

Rice

Richard

Rumsfeld

Wolfowitz

Zakheim

Zoellick

Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JI

Project for the New American Century (PNAC)

Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG)

Council on Foreign Relations

American Enterprise Institute

Brookings Institution

Hoover Institution

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

RAND Corporation

National Bureau of Economic Research

Center for Security Policy

World Bank Group

DanzigGeithner

Goolsbee

Holbrooke

Orszag

Rice

Rmer

Steinberg

Summers

Tyson

Volcker

Wolin

Democratic Leadership Council

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

Center for a New American SecurityCouncil on Foreign Relations

National Bureau of Economic Research

Atlantic Council of the United States

Brookings Institution

RAND Corporation

Peterson Institute for International Economics

Trilateral Commission

G30


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It is important to emphasise that these networks of think tanks and policy planning groups are also

very much class-based networks inasmuch as they are in turn also strongly linked to dominant

sections of US capital as documented by extensive sociological research (for an overview see

Domhoff 2009; see also Burris 2008). In this respect, then, differences within these networks have to

be seen as intra-class differences.

In contrast to the corporate affiliations, the think tank affiliations generate quite distinct

networks, especially with respect to the Bush network. All three administration members have

connections to the Council on Foreign Relations and Center for Strategic and International Studies

(CSIS) (which are as confirmed by these data very central, bipartisan and mainstream think tanks

within the US foreign policy establishment). Other similarities we find are between the Bush

networ k and Obama network both having affiliations with Brookings Institution and the RAND

Corporation , and between the Obama network and the Clinton network concerning their

affiliations with the Trilateral Commission . Otherwise they are quite differently configured.

The graphs only show the network established by nodes (actors and think tanks) with more than

one affiliation (i.e. have > 1 degree), which has the advantage apart from making them more

readable - that it gives a direct impression of the main component (i.e. the largest connected

network). In the case of the Clinton and the Obama administration this rendered quite small networks,

with many actors falling outside of the main component , especially in the case of the Obama

network. However, this was not the case wi th the Bush network, where only one actor fell outside of

the main component, and the network generally turned out to be more connected and with higher node

degrees (i.e. more affiliations per actor and / or think tank). The Bush network is also characteri sed

by the prominence of two explicitly neoconservative think tanks: the American Enterprise Institute

(AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) , which have a very central position in

the network and each have between 8 and 10 core members of the Bush administrations connected to

them. Other neoconservative think tanks/advocacy groups connected to the Bush network are: Jewish

Institute for National Security Affairs , Center for Peace and Security in the Gulf (active lobby group

for the removal of Saddam Hussein since at least 1998), and the hawkish and highly influential foreign

policy think tank Center for Security Policy . This indicates first of all that amongst the key foreignpolicy makers of the Bush administration (in 2001) there has been more interaction and shared

membership within these ideological and policy advising platforms outside of government than has

been case with the other two administrations. The prominence of many outspoken neoconservative

think tanks in the Bush network must be seen as a key factor in the adminstration s grand strategy

making (see De Graaff and Van Apeldoorn forthcoming

Apeldoorn-Graaff_ClassPower-US-GrandStrategy-SGIR2010

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