THE EMPIRE IN DISARRAY: GLOBAL CHALLENGES TO THE
INTERNATIONAL ORDER
Harry Targ
A whole generation of activists have politically
“grown up” conversant with the central place of empire in human history.
Children of the Cold War and the “sixties” generation realized that the United States was the
latest of a multiplicity of imperial powers who sought to dominate and control
human beings, physical space, natural resources, and human labor power. We
learned from the Marxist tradition, radical historians, scholar/activists with
historical roots in Africa, and revolutionaries from the Philippines and
Vietnam to Southern Africa, to Latin America. We tended to accept the view that
imperialism was hegemonic.
A “theory of imperialism” for the 21st
century should include four interconnected variables that explain empire
building and responses to it. First, as an original motivation for empire,
economic interests are primary. The most recent imperial power, the United
States needed to secure customers for its products, outlets for manufacturing
investment opportunities, an open door for financial speculation, and vital
natural resources such as oil.
Second, geopolitics and military control parallel and
support the pursuit of economic domination. The United States, beginning in the
1890s, built a two-ocean navy to become a Pacific power as well as a Western
Hemisphere power. The “Asian pivot” of the 21st century and
continued opposition to the Cuban and Bolivarian revolutions reflect the one
hundred year extension of the convergence of economics and geopolitics in U.S.
foreign policy.
Third, as imperial nations flex their muscles on the
world stage they need to rationalize exploitation and military brutality to
convince others and their own citizens of the humanistic goals they wish to
achieve. In short, ideology matters. In the U.S. case “manifest destiny” and
the “city on the hill” have been embedded in the dominant national narrative of
the country for 150 years.
However, what has often been missing from the leftwing
theoretical calculus is an understanding of resistance. Latin American and
African dependency theorists and “bottom-up” historians have argued for a long
time that resistance must be part of the understanding of any theory of
imperialism. In fact, the imperial system is directly related to the level of
resistance the imperial power encounters. Resistance generates more attempts at
economic hegemony, political subversion , the application of military power,
and patterns of “humanitarian interventionism” and diplomatic techniques called
“soft power” today to defuse resistance. But as the recent events suggest
resistance of various kinds is spreading throughout global society.
The impetus for adding resistance to any understanding
of imperialism has many sources including Howard Zinn’s seminal history of
popular movements in the United States, “The Peoples History of the United
States.” Zinn argued convincingly that in each period of American history
ruling class rule was challenged, shaped, weakened, and in a few cases defeated
because of movements of indigenous people, workers, women, people of color,
middle class progressives and others who stood up to challenge the status quo.
More recently, Vijay Prashad, “The Darker Nations,”
compiled a narrative of post-World War II international relations that
privileged the resistance from the Global South. World history was as much
shaped by anti-colonial movements, the construction of the non-aligned
movement, conferences and programs supporting liberation struggles and women’s
rights as it was by big power contestation. The Prashad book was subtitled “A
Peoples History of the Third World.”
The 21st century has witnessed a variety of
forms of resistance to global hegemony and the perpetuation of neo-liberal
globalization all across the face of the globe. First, various forms of
systemic resistance have emerged. These often emphasize the reconfiguration of
nation-states and their relationships that have long been ignored. The two
largest economies in the world, China and India, have experienced economic
growth rates well in excess of the industrial capitalist countries. China has
developed a global export and investment program in Latin America and Africa
that exceeds that of the United States and Europe.
In addition, the rising economic powers have begun a
process of global institution building to rework the international economic
institutions and rules of decision-making on the world stage. On March 26-27,
2013 the BRICS met in Durban, South Africa. While critical of BRICS
shortcomings Patrick Bond, Senior Professor of Development Studies and director
of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society, in a collection of
readings on the subject introduces BRICS:
In
Durban, five heads of state meet to assure the rest of Africa that their
countries’ corporations are better investors in infrastructure, mining, oil and
agriculture than the traditional European and US multinationals. The
Brazil-Russia-India-China-SAS summit also includes 16 heads of state from
Africa, including notorious tyrants. A new ‘BRICS bank’ will probably be
launched, There will be more talk about monetary alternatives to the US
dollar.”
On the Latin American continent, most residents of the
region are mourning the death of Hugo Chavez, the leader of the Bolivarian
Revolution. Under Chavez’s leadership, inspiration, and support from oil
revenues, Venezuela launched the latest round of state resistance to the
colossus of the north, the United States. Along with the world’s third largest
trade bloc MERCOSUR (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and associate
memberships including Venezuela and Chile), Latin Americans have participated
in the construction of financial institutions and economic assistance programs
to challenge the traditional hegemony of the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. The Bolivarian Revolution also
has stimulated spreading political change based on various degrees of
grassroots democratization, the construction of workers’ cooperatives, and a shift from neoliberal economic policy
to economic populism. With a growing web of participants, Bolivia, Ecuador,
Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and, of course, Cuba, the
tragic loss of Chavez will not mean the end to the Bolivarian Revolution. It
might lead to its deepening.
But the story of 21st century resistance is
not just about countries, alliances, new economic institutions that mimic the
old. Grassroots social movements have been spreading like wild fire all across
the face of the globe. The story can begin in many places and at various times:
the new social movements of the 1980s, the Zapatistas of the 1990s, the
anti-globalization/anti-IMF campaigns going back to the 1960s and continuing
off and on until the new century, and repeated mass mobilizations against a
Free Trade Agreement for the Americas.
Since 2011, the world has been inspired by Arab
Spring, workers mobilizations all across the industrial heartland of the United
States, students strikes in Quebec, the state of California, and in Santiago,
Chile. Beginning in 2001 mass organizations from around the world began to
assemble in Porto Allegre, Brazil billing their meeting of some 10,000 strong,
the World Social Forum. They did not wish to create a common political program.
They wished to launch a global social movement where ideas are shared, issues
and demands from the base of societies could be raised, and in general the
neoliberal global agenda reinforced at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland
could be challenged.
Since 2001, the World Social Forum has assembled in
Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the United States. Most recently, the last
week in March, 2013, 50,000 people from 5,000 organizations in 127 countries
from five continents meet in Tunis, the site of the protest that sparked Arab
Spring in 2011. Planners wanted to bring mass movements from the Middle East
and North Africa into the collective narrative of this global mobilization. As
Medea Benjamin reports, this Social Forum was the first to have a “dedicated
‘Climate space’ to emphasize ‘food sovereignty, water justice and respect for
the rights of indigenous and forest peoples. Session rejected ‘false solutions”
put forward by governments that would not solve the environmental crises facing
humankind.
Benjamin reported that a Tunisian student, when asked
whether the Social Forum movement should continue, answered in the affirmative.
The student paid homage to the Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, who
committed suicide and launched Arab Spring and declared that “for all those who
have died struggling for justice, we must continue to learn from each other how
to build a world that does not respond to the greed of dictators, bankers or
corporations, but to the needs of simple people like Mohamed Bouazizi.”
(The original essay was posted on The Rag Blog as "Global Challenges to the International Order," April 10, 2013)
