Harry Targ
I want to make four points about the international system today:
First, we are witnessing a qualitative shift in the distribution of global power (economic, military, social, and cultural). The hegemon of the last 150 years, the United States, is experiencing a decline in relative power. Among the new rising powers are collectives from the Global South--BRICS, the Non-Aligned Movement, what remains of the Pink Tide--and most importantly China. Chinese economic development since 1979 has been enormous. 850 million people have risen from poverty. Chinese economic development, scientific advances, global investments and participation in the movements of transnational capital have been significant. As Alfred McCoy (In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power, Haymarket, 2017) has pointed out, the United States, a declining empire, is pursuing a desperate path to retain its hegemony through the only means it has at its disposal, new military advances: drones, the space force, new generations of aircraft, new rounds of nuclear weapons, and the development of a cyber-war capability. At the policy and ideological level this has meant a recurring proclamation by Trump spokespersons, and leaders of the Democratic Party, that we are at war with China. This new Cold War, given the current environmental and public health dangers and new military technologies, represents an even bigger threat to humanity than the first Cold War.
Second, since the declining empire sees itself in competition all across the globe and massive resistance to US hegemony is rising everywhere, most notably in the Western Hemisphere in recent years, the United States has upgraded its hybrid war strategies-adding to covert interventions by supplementing them with brutal economic sanctions. Countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran are being systematically starved in the hope that starvation will lead to internal revolutions. (The US has achieved some successes in places like Bolivia, Ecuador, and Brazil) but it has so far failed in Cuba and Venezuela and countries like Argentina are moving back to the center/left). In addition to economic sanctions against declared enemies, the United States remains allied with regimes that brutalize their own people and make war on others. https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2020/01/hybrid-warswhat-is-new-and-what-is-not.html
Third, the US project to maintain global hegemony is linked to continued and escalating military expenditures. The official DOD projected budget is at about $740 billion dollars. There are military projects still in about 430 Congressional Districts, universities are increasingly currying DOD research dollars to overcome lost revenues, and numerous corporations still rely on military contracts. Whether we still call it the “military (university, congressional)industrial complex” or Andrew Bacevich’s “permanent war economy,” military spending has thoroughly permeated US society. While they are demonstrably wrong political elites believe that escalating military spending will serve both to build a capacity to resist imperial decline and to overcome the US stagnating economy. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2020/militarized-budget-2020/
https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2009/01/permanent-war-economy.html
Fourth, according to the World Bank almost
one half of the world’s population lives in poverty (under $2.50 per day).While
race is a critical force in facilitating poverty by dividing masses of people,
the class divide between the tiny minority capitalist class who rule the world
in juxtaposition to the overwhelming majority of humankind remains a critical
fact in understanding what happens within societies and between them. In other
words, undergirding the nation-state system, rising and declining empires, and
a vast incremental growth in militaries is a global class struggle. The
immiseration of the global masses of humanity is propagated by institutions, social
practices, and ideologies that perpetuate exploitation, racism, patriarchy,
ethno-nationalism, and homophobia. In this moment, sectors of the world’s
marginalized have been mobilized by appeals to the rightwing agendas promoted
by ruling classes. In the end, the struggles for economic justice,
environmental justice, the end to racism, patriarchy, and ethno-nationalism
must be understood as significant byproducts of a worldwide capitalist system
that is in disarray. https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2020/04/understanding-venezuela-global-north.html
In short, in the midst of pandemic, increasing hostilities between nations, enormous military expenditures, escalating racial tensions, the tasks of the peace movement remain daunting. But given the rising of people all around the world, however, hope is justified. Our tasks should include:
--Say no to Cold War. Resolve disputes through diplomacy not through threats of war.
--End brutal economic sanctions against all countries and people.
--Stop supporting regimes that brutalize their people and make war on others.
--Radically cut military spending.
--Articulate the connections between imperialism, capitalism, racism, patriarchy, ethno-nationalism, homophobia, and environmental destruction. Unite with others to challenge them all.
