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Reviewing the New Imperialist
by Jim Miles
The new imperialism is part a recognition that, yes, the United States is an imperial power as accepted and supported by various neocon pundits and apologists, and part a recognition that it takes a different form than previous empires, no longer so much as colonial-settlement projects but an economically-ideologically based empire.
There is still very much a land base to the empire with over seven hundred fifty military establishments of one form or another in over one hundred thirty countries. Yet it is the institutional structuring of global enterprises that now determines the nature and kind of empire, with a somewhat different rationale behind these structures.
A Review of The New Imperialists – Ideologies of Empire
(Ed. Colin Mooers. Oneworld Publications, Oxford, England. 2006.)
by Jim Miles
It could be argued that the ‘new’ imperialism is only different
from the ‘old’ imperialism as a matter of degree and a few not so
cleverly disguised rationalizations, as the military is a necessity to
support the economic push of free-market capitalism, as militarism had
always supported either the greed of the original corporate entities –
the Hudson’s Bay Company, the East India Company (Dutch and British) –
or the settlement policies that frequently accompanied them, especially
in North America, South Africa, and Australia.
Accepting
however that there are certainly new parameters to the current American
empire – it being the sole empire; the emphasis on ‘neutral’ free
market capitalism; the support of major world institutions such as the
WTO, World Bank, IMF and more recently the UN; the rationales of ‘rule
of law’ and ‘transparency’ – this volume deconstructs the arguments of
the apologists for empire, those that see it as a valid and good thing
for the world in general.
Ellen Wood, formerly Professor of
Political Science at York University, Toronto, argues that the
ideological basis for the new empire is democracy, in a form that
“Thwarts the majority in one way or another” as well as “to empty
democracy of as much social content as possible.” Anyone who has read
James Madison’s writings in the Federalist Papers will know the essence
of this discussion. Freedom of capital markets is the new democracy, a
democracy of form and rhetoric but no real substance, no function for
the ‘demos’, the people.
Aziz Al-Azmeh’s essay “After the Fact:
Reading Tocqueville in Baghdad” is both obtuse and grittily realistic,
depending on whether he is discussing the philosophy of Tocqueville in
relation to U.S. democratic ideals, or whether he discusses the
aftermath of U.S. policy in action in Iraq and Palestine. He does
support Ms Wood with the argument that U.S. democracy can be “dark,
irrational, highly illiberal and intolerant….rendering it at times
undemocratic in all but formal arrangements.”
The ideas of
Fukuyama and Huntington are discussed by Tariq Ali under the topic of
“Tortured Civilizations”, stemming from the American view of history
and empire that suffers “from intellectual and historical amnesia, and
a sense of denial bordering on the delusional.” This “collective
memory loss” it is argued, stems from the superiority complex of the
victors – the victors get to write the history as it suits them. The
end result of Ali’s discussion is the idea that “Through its own
myopia, the West has given radical Islam the ammunition it was
thirsting for….If this blindness and these lies persist, the long term
prospects are too desperate to contemplate.”
The argument of
support given to radical Islam is continued by Shahrzad Mojab, of the
University of Toronto, who indicates that “The imperial interests of
the United States…acted as a brake on the struggle for the separation
of state and religion,” by consistently encouraging “the suppression of
civil liberties, nascent civil societies and public spheres, which they
considered to favor communism.” Mojab writes for the feminist
perspective, using academic terminology perhaps not fully accessible to
the reader unfamiliar with these views, but there are also statements
clear and succinct that support both the theme of the book and her
views that the women involved in U.S. empirical conflicts are not being
aided but conversely “U.S. control has helped the traditionalizing,
retribalizing and reprimordializing of society,” where the true enemies
of women are “patriarchy…and capitalist forms of exploitation.”
My
favourite essay, due to personal bias as a Canadian having to suffer
under the flaky intellectual admonitions of Michael Ignatieff, is David
McNally’s essay “Imperial Narcissism: Michael Ignatieff’s Apologies for
Empire.” Perhaps because I am more familiar with this topic, this is
one of the more clearly written essays, effectively deconstructing
Ignatieff’s arguments using personal and intellectual descriptors
sprinkled freely within his arguments: “moral
superiority…smugness…empty
platitudes…banalities…opportunistic…narcissistic…converses with
himself…arrogant presumption…fetish of empire…appalling historical
revisionism…double standards…fractures logic” and the final conclusion
that Ignatieff is an “accomplice of madness and horror.” Couldn’t have
said it better myself. Canada should dread the day if Ignatieff ever
succeeds to Liberal leadership and possible leadership of Canada, as he
would take us into realms of the “lesser evil” unknowns alongside the
violent decline of the American empire.
In a similar vein, Colin
Mooers lashes into Niall Ferguson and his “Nostalgia for Empire:
Imperial History for American Power.” Ferguson is great for revising
and sanitizing British imperial history, describing all its supposed
benefits, but fully ignoring the context of wars, famines, and wealth
accumulation that are the real essence of empire. The example
presented here focuses on India, “a pre-capitalist economy by means of
a ‘military-despotic’ state based on an alliance with the most backward
religious and caste ridden elements of Indian society.” How
nostalgic!
Following these rather pleasingly damning
critiques is a more intellectual essay by Thom Workman discussing the
influence of the Straussian scholars from which the current neocon
group is largely descended. For Strauss, empire becomes the natural
outcome of a “relatively permanent human nature.” Through discussing
Thucydides’ descriptions of the Peloponnesian wars – readings that the
Straussians claim supports the idea of empire as a natural outcome of
human nature – Thom concludes that “Thucydides cannot be
appropriated…for the Athenian historian generated a sobering indictment
of the Peloponnesian war and its excesses.” His concern is that the
Straussian interpretation “lends a sense of historic continuity...even
destiny, to U.S. imperialism…and [it] helps the capitalist class pursue
its renovated accumulation strategies globally….”
The next
essay starts with a description of Iraq as it “provides a perfect
illustration of this intimate connection between neoliberalism and
imperialism. The significance of the case lies in the manner with
which neoliberalism has been so thoroughly driven by U.S. military
force.” Adam Hanieh deconstructs the arguments of Deepak Lal,
described as a “Leading neoliberal economist…whose work has been widely
promoted in U.S. government circles and neo-conservative think-tanks.”
Hanieh argues against the assumptions of the ‘perfect’ market, of
consumer sovereignty, establishing the position that conversely, the
centralization of capital, the commodification of resources, the
privatization of government functions, all represent the “domination of
increasing spheres of human activity by the profit motive,” not the
“satisfaction of human needs.” He reaches into the area of credit,
saying it is “critical to the functioning of the global economy,” with
results we are seeing now, seen presciently with his comment about
“when the natural limits of this process will be reached….” After
working through advertising (which negates the argument of ‘consumer
sovereignty’), and the environment, he finalizes his position on a
familiar theme, indicating, “the necessary partners of economic freedom
are the guns of the U.S. military.”
Arguments around “American
Soft Power, or, American Cultural Imperialism?” are explored by Tanner
Mirrlees, looking at first at how the idea of ‘cultural imperialism’
was replaced with apparently more acceptable ‘cultural globalization’.
The underlying ideas for cultural dominance are “a belief in America’s
exceptionalism” and “a belief in America’s universality” (readily
evident for any readers of Kaplan, Ledeen, Friedman, or similar
apologists for empire). The reality supporting it all is the “desire to
sustain U.S. political and economic dominance – and global
capitalism.” Mirrlees concentrates on deconstructing Joseph Nye’s
(formerly Undersecretary of State for Carter, Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Clinton, and Dean of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of
Government) recent “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World
Politics.” Nye’s arguments are filtered down to supporting “the
imperial state’s hegemonic goal of…coercion with...ideological
suasion.”
Nye’s discussion is actually quite soft in
comparison to that of Leigh Armistead (former instructor of information
warfare at the Joint Forces Staff College) who writes about U.S.
information operations, a pleasant euphemism for propaganda. Armistead
edges into hard power territory with arguments for “computer network
attack (C.N.A.) as the first offensive information strategy”, followed
by the “deepened militarization of space by U.S. transnational media,
surveillance, and technology corporations”, into “electronic warfare…or
use of electromagnetic energy to control or attack the electromagnetic
fields of an adversarial entity.” Armistead is reduced to “an
acceptance of military and state propaganda as a necessary function of
U.S. national security.” Ahh, finally, someone who accepts all the
corporate advertising as propaganda for the debt-ridden consumptive
lifestyle habits that support the homeland.
A fellow Canadian
is analysed next, Matthew Fraser, who clearly says, “America’s global
domination is based mainly on the superiority of U.S. hard power,”
while self-contradicting with the statement that “the influence,
prestige, and legitimacy of the emerging American Empire will depend on
the effectiveness of its soft power.” Another ahhh moment….what you do
speaks so loud, I can’t hear what you are saying….
Finally, a
discussion I had not considered before, but one that makes sense as
presented, that of “U.N. Imperialism: Unleashing Entrepreneurship in
the Developing World.” by Paul Cammack, Professor of Politics at
Manchester Metropolitan University. The UN is seen as being co-opted
to the values of ‘globalization’ in its economic terms in order to
alleviate global poverty through free market capitalism. Under the
leadership of Kofi Annan, the UN accepted the ideas of the corporate
world – the WTO, OECD, World Bank, IMF, a truly multi-lateral layering
of concepts – in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals to
eradicate world poverty. Cammack’s conclusion is that America accepted
a “broader imperialist project than it could possibly control” with
“the uncompromisingly pro-capitalist project developed by the U.N. over
a decade [winning] universal acceptance.” A nice concept except that
free market capitalism necessitates poverty and has much evidence
against it in many areas of the world (see most recently Ha-Joon
Chang’s “The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism,”
as well as Amy Chua’s “World on Fire”, Greg Grandin’s “Empire’s
Workshop” and works by John Pilger, Gilbert Achcar, Walden Bellow,
Chalmers Johnson, and Noam Chomsky among others).
The
terminology used by the current apologists is seductive, the words
carefully crafted to make it seam at least benign and at best a
wonderful panacea for the world’s ills. Issues that disrupt the
apologist’s arguments are carefully avoided or conceitedly derided as
imaginative or unimportant. The authors of these ten essays draw out
the illogic of the arguments presented as well as drawing in the
relevant information that counters the weight of the arguments. As with
any assortment of essays – ten in this case – some are more clearly
written than others from a terminology-philosophy perspective while
others are more clearly written in terms of essay construction,
following a clear pattern of arguments. Generally it works well, and
for anyone interested in finding support for their arguments against
empire, this is a strong volume to have in one’s library.
Jim
Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of
opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles’
work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and
news publications.
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