Harry Targ
Part
One
United States foreign policy since the dawn of the
twentieth century has been shaped by similar but competing ideologies.
Ideologies are usually generated by those who rule to explain and justify the
policies that they adopt and implement. Often, but not always, purveyors of one
or another ideology believe what they say. And journalists and scholars dignify
the ideologies by developing rigorous explanations of why the approaches taken
are justified by theories of human conduct.
During various periods of world history, elites who
compete for power and influence disagree over policy but share a common
ideological understanding of the world. But sometimes policy disagreements lead
to substantial conflicts of perspective, of ideologies. With the election of
Donald Trump, ideological contestation between two elite class ideologies has
emerged: one based upon the theory of neoliberal globalization and the other on
a thesis based on an alleged clash of civilizations. Understanding the
ideological disputes might help deconstruct the political disputes today over
foreign (and domestic) policy and facilitate the process of resisting both
versions of a United States imperial agenda.
The
Ideology of Neoliberal Globalization
The policy referred to as neoliberalism has its
historical roots in the expansion of capitalism out of feudalism. Theorists as
varied as Adam Smith and Karl Marx saw capitalism as an expansive system that
through competition led to growth of economic actors. For Smith, capitalist
competition would reach its natural limits and “the invisible hand” would
become a regulator of the enterprises that prospered in the marketplace,
limiting egregious consolidation of economic and political power.
For Marx capital accumulation meant that competitive
capitalism would be qualitatively transformed into consolidated and later
monopoly capitalism. This process of economic consolidation was inextricably
connected to globalization: from kidnapping and enslavement, to trade,
investment, and appropriating natural resources. By the time of the
Spanish/Cuban/American war the United States had accumulated enough military
power to expand its economic tentacles to Asia, the Pacific, and the Caribbean
and Latin America. But competition with other colonial powers, the Russian and
Chinese revolutions, and world wars stifled the free unfettered expansion of United States capitalism.
After World War II, with the United States as the
dominant power, a global economy was constructed that facilitated trade,
investment, and a debt system. The then existing Socialist Bloc, rising
anti-colonial movements in the Global South, the spread of social democracies
across Europe, and labor pressures at home limited the full economic freedom
that would maximize the opportunities of capitalist expansion.
By the 1970s, economic competition among capitalist states, anti-colonial wars against
the United States, and overproduction of goods and services combined to reduce
rates of profit. Monopoly capital expanded its historic shift from
manufacturing to financial speculation. As Lenin had long ago assumed, the
export of capital began to take priority over the export of commodities.
To facilitate financial speculation, political elites began to actively pursue on
a global basis what became the neoliberal agenda: privatization of all public
institutions; deregulation of economies; austerity, that is cutting social
programs that give some support to majorities for education, health care, jobs,
housing, and transportation; and for many of the world’s countries shifting
their economic programs from producing goods and services for their own people
to the development of larger and larger export sectors.
In addition, with the qualitative shift in capitalism
from manufacturing to financialization, neoliberal institutions encouraged the
opening of national economies to foreign speculators. As the price of oil rose
dramatically in the 1970s an emerging debt system was created whereby countries of
the Global South were forced by international financial institutions to adopt neoliberal
policies. The collapse of socialism in the 1990s triggered a radical transformation
in the former Socialist Bloc to free market economies. The changes imposed by
international institutions were to occur quickly, sometimes called “shock
therapy.” Also Social Democracies in Europe shifted in the direction of
neoliberalism. The rise to power of Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and
Ronald Reagan in the United States personified this global shift in public
policy at home and abroad.
The neoliberal policy agenda was defended in terms of
the presumed connection between market freedom and development, capitalism and
development, markets and democracy, and the fanciful idea that neoliberal
globalization would facilitate harmony among nations, economic development, and
the transformation from four hundred years of nation-state competition to a new
world order.
In the United States political elites of both major
political parties endorsed the major features of neoliberalism: free trade
agreements; pressures on poor countries to deregulate their economies;
downsizing all governments at home and abroad; and using military power to
impose the neoliberal agenda on recalcitrant countries. Most foreign policy
elites from the 1980s on advocated so-called “humanitarian interventions,” to
transform rogue states that opposed the global shift in economic and political
institutions.
The ideology of neoliberal globalization justified
trade agreements such as The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the
emerging World Trade Organization (WTO). US foreign policies inspired by
neoliberal ideology justified military
interventions in the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, Persian Gulf and East
Asia and subversion of regimes in Latin America and Africa. And under the guise
of promoting market democracies the United States since the 1990s constructed
over 700 military bases, mostly small “lily pads;” established a military
command structure in Africa; and since 2009 unleashed drone warfare on an
unprecedented scale. Supporters of the neoliberal agenda continue to support
expanded trade agreements, expansion of the global presence of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and military spending.
(A competing
ideological justification for the promotion of United States imperialism based
on the “clash of civilizations” has gained influence over the foreign policy
process in the new administration of Donald Trump. Racism, always deeply
embedded in foreign policy discourse, becomes central to the United States
foreign policy. The idea of the “clash of civilizations” will be discussed in
Part Two of this essay. HT)
