Notes On Militarism And Hegemony
At the dawn of the 21st century, American imperialism emerges as fully grown militarism. Though globalization appears to decline, economic hegemony by a small corporate elite continues. While the human world increasingly separates into richer and poorer, popular resistance to the American concept of capitalism grows stronger in spite of the information manipulation practiced by both the US government and mainstream media. As Linda Hogan writes, “something between us and earth has broken.” (2001, p 18) Human beings suffer under the order forced onto them by imperialism, but healing remains possible.
“For most people in the world, peace is war” (2004,p 15) according to Arundhati Roy. “Wars are often the end result of a flawed peace.” (p 16) In order to create a viable peace, she claims, the flaws of what calls itself such needs examination. Similarly, Sungur Savran states that “we have to approach to grips with the mechanisms and modalities” through which (US) imperialism seeks world hegemony. To the American government, cultivating the military and spreading an ‘empire of bases,’ as Chalmers Johnson calls it, is officially decreed as the guarantor of ‘peace.’ During the Cold War, Soviet “containment and strategic denial became the rationales for a new version of imperialism that replaced the old and discredited practice of colonialism.” (Johnson, 2004 p 193)
Disguised as non-imperialist and solely security oriented, American military bases and militarism blossomed. According to Johnson, the continuation of military installations past their original purpose clearly indicates militarism, not a exertion with national security. Furthermore, following the demise of the Soviet Union the US sought new enemies to maintain its military machine fueled. Alongside the bases came US interventions in foreign governments, such as Iran in 1953, wars outside of US soil – Vietnam, Korea, Panama, the Balkans, Iraq, the list goes on – and an increase in crime and cultural degeneration among the communities surrounding American bases. Growing anti-American sentiments throughout the globe leads to massive protests, and at the most extreme level, terrorist attacks, as hatred breeds hatred.
Clearly, ‘peace’ as defined by US government policy differs from that sought by the stout majority of people around the world. “The US military is the indispensable hard core of the military might of imperialism in the present epoch.” (Savran, 2004, p 138) The current Bush administration apparently considers American hegemony rooted deeply enough that the need to disguise their imperialist ambitions no longer matters. The new National Security Strategy blatantly and unilaterally proclaims the American ‘right’ to attack anyone deemed ‘dangerous’.
The so-called neocons of the current administration have made their plans clear long, before executing them, through think tanks such as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Roy writes that there exists a shred of hope because even though another president may have done the same, he “would have managed to smoke up the glass and confuse the opposition. Perhaps even carry the United Nations with him.” Instead, the Bush administration has done the opposite and “exposed the ducts.” (2004, p 39) American imperialism lies displayed for examination, open for anyone willing to notice – and many do.
However, information manipulation in various manifestations attempts to control public awareness as well as to guide public opinion. Both Roy and Johnson discuss media manipulation of the Iraq war, such as the (unofficial) ban of images showing American casualties in the war, and language manipulation devised to steer public opinion. The need to go to war in Iraq was created by the mainstream media in the US and by a government that gave no heed to information they did not want to hear. Roy describes crisis reportage as creating an easy system of ‘choice a or b’ regarding events that in reality involve multiple aspects and a complex history, thus polarizing people on two ends and distorting issues.
Information manipulation is not unique to the US. For example, Roy explains how “in the era of corporate globalization, poverty is a crime, and protesting against further impoverishment is terrorism. In the era of the War on Terror, poverty is being slyly conflated with terrorism.” (p 12) Whether in India, Chechnya, Kurdish Turkey, or Palestinian Israel, throughout the world those who protest against the atrocities carried out against them in the name of democracy by a stronger elitist government become simply ‘terrorists’ to be dealt with accordingly.
Official secrecy forms another form of information manipulation. Military installations and activities remain largely secret as ‘national security’ deems necessary. Congressional oversight as written into law and guaranteed by the Constitution becomes pushed to the margins as increased secrecy is desired by the executive branch and the Pentagon. Secret budgets for the CIA and other organizations, clandestine domestic spying operations made possible through Echelon and the Patriot Act, hidden government activities through contracting private companies not subject to congressional oversight, training of foreign troops to carry out desired tasks, and other secret activities continually generate US militarism while avoiding accountability.
The purposes of information manipulation include the need to avoid public accountability for incidents of backlash against the US, such as several terrorist attacks against Americans in Saudi Arabia during the 1980s and 1990s. According to Johnson, the US government has always been aware that the presence of US military bases on Saudi soil is “a root cause” (2004, p 241) of al-Qaeda activities, including 9/11. However, diplomatic and corporate ties between the US and Saudi Arabia, and the need to avoid acknowledging negative effects of American bases combine to preserve the administration quiet. Instead, with the help of further information manipulation, the US attacked Afghanistan and Iraq instead even though the latter held no discernible involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
The main reason behind information manipulation is US militarism which needs to create war to keep itself going, by instilling public alarm and thus generating support for military intervention. Perhaps the biggest lie told by the US government is the claim of democratization, one of many reasons given for the Iraq war and virtually every other action taken by the US. Most of the world lost its innocence long ago, however. “There is virtually no case in Asia, Europe, or Latin America where in making a decision to establish bases we gave any consideration to whether or not a government was democratic.” (p 203) Similarly, American economic practices abroad do not foster democracy, instead following along with or steering the trends of globalization that degrade living standards. There is neither peace, nor democracy, coming forth from the US.
Nor does there appear to be peace emerging from globalization. Globalization involves several changes in international relations and world capitalism. According to Bill Robinson, globalization is “an epochal shift [which] captures the idea of changes in social structure that transform the very plot that the system functions. Globalization … is marked by a number of fundamental shifts in the capitalist system.” (2004, p 156) Jayati Ghosh distinguishes globalization from the monopoly stage of capitalism defined by Lenin, but notes that imperialism is still the impetus of this modern ‘epochal shift’. Militarism as defined by Johnson constitutes an important aspect of globalization, as Sungur Savran explains that “… the ancient order has to be negated violently so that the current order may be established as a synthesis of order and disorder.” (2004, p 119)
Robinson writes that globalization entails the rise of ‘transnational capital’, what Sungur Savran calls ‘mega-capital’, in other words a globally oriented market dominated by enormous corporations. For example, corporation mergers expose the growth of international finance, especially among media companies. “The 1990s witnessed an unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions among global media giants. .. Many of these firms have explicitly rejected national identities and posited themselves as global or internationally based corporations.” (Ghosh, 2004, p 101)
The push for deregulation, new markets, and increased profit inherent in the imperialist capitalism of globalization has spawned companies that increasingly control worldwide markets without comparable competition. Privatization, commercialization, and new technologies such as the multimedia boom invent new opportunities for capitalist expansion, as does the opening of post-Soviet nations throughout Eurasia1.
The new nations that sprung up in Central Asia hold potential energy reserves and other natural resources coveted by the US and others, the reason Johnson gives for the two permanent US bases in the residence (in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) and the push for further political control. The nations of Eurasia also form a plausible foothold against Russia and China. According to both Johnson and Savran, American involvement in the Balkans during the 1990s held the same motive as the former Yugoslavia could potentially ally itself with Russia. The battle described by Savran and Johnson over Central Asia could easily be compared to the Great Game of the obsolete European imperialist states, which though ended in an official agreement in 19072 apparently continues today.
Changes in imperialist government and world politics represents another aspect of globalization. While Bill Robinson argues that a change in world relations due to globalization implies the creation of transnational states, Jayati Ghosh and Sungur Savran disagree with Robinson, claiming that apparently transnational corporations still rely on their home states. Although corporations influence governments, because “capital can neither dispense with nor create a world government,” (Savran, 2004, p 132) the establishment of international organizations serve as a perform of world government enforced mainly by the militarism of the US.
The financial ‘troika’ (Savran’s terminology) of the IMF, the WTO, and the World Bank, the UN, and NATO serve as a semblance of international cooperation while in reality controlled by the main imperialist powers of Europe and, especially, the US to their own benefit. Globalization in regards to the nation-state is false terminology, as globalization actually indicates the ambitions of imperialist ‘mega-capital’ from a small number of great nations.
A definitive result of globalization is the emergence of a global elite, or a ‘transnational capitalist class’ as Bill Robinson writes. According to Jayati Ghosh, imperialist powers act together, for example in WTO negotiations, “to create a realignment of the relations of power in the face of the vacuum engendered by” (Savran, 2004, p145) the collapse of the Soviet Union. For example, in South America, within the US sphere of action at least since the Spanish-American War of 1898, the whole site experienced “a thorough restructuring and integration into the global economy under the neoliberal model.” (Robinson, 2004, p 159) According to Chalmers Johnson, during the 20th century a large military-industrial network grew our of imperialist militarism in the US, with several implications.
The contemporary American military consists of professional, career-minded individuals, not the conscripts of the pre-Vietnam War era. To avoid congressional oversight, the military increasingly increasingly hires private enterprises to train foreign troops, build or hasten military bases, and provide unique technologies and the necessary technical support or training for them. Former military officers often enter private industry catering to the military, or into politics where they influence public policy from a militaristic standpoint. Simultaneously, many politicians appointed to security positions within the government hold no military expertise, showing that the relationship between industry and military travels in both directions. Perhaps most significantly, US foreign policy and military actions often serve the interests of the American elite, usually to the benefit of the elites of foreign nations as well.
Alongside the rise of a global elite, globalization also brought about increased polarization. “With the onset of the depressive phase of the long wave of capitalist development in the mid-1970s, relations between the classes changed dramatically.” (Savran, 2004, p 127) Speaking of South Asia, Jayati Ghosh notes the falsity of growth in the region as since the 1990s “…across the region this growth pattern was marked by low employment generation, greater income inequality and the persistence of poverty.” (Ghosh, 2004,p106) Growth as defined by a global elite indicates increased generation of capital into their own coffers, not the increased wealth of the majority of populations who often give up comforts from their meager lives instead. According to Savran, this “worldwide maximisation of profits for mega-capital … [constitutes] an assault on the power, however limited, of the working class.” (Savran, 2004, p 127) This drive toward increased profits includes the denial or wearing away of labor rights, erosion of social services, privatization, and oppression of peoples worldwide.
For example, Bill Robinson writes of the impending crises in South America, where many nations face foreign debts guaranteed to drive them into eventual bankruptcy. Already during the early 21st century several nations in the region face massive demonstrations from below, sometimes violent. In most nations of South America, since the slack 1970s the poverty levels increased, per capita income dropped, social services decreased drastically, and the negotiating power of the working class decreased dramatically – all in the attempt by their governments to create environments “to attract mobile transnational capital.” (Robinson, 2004, p 168)
In spite of a snarl in foreign investment to South America during the 1990s, under neoliberal policies, internal sacrifices made to attract capital, and the imposed programs of the financial ‘troika,’ “the external debt [of Latin America combined] in fact continued to grow throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, from $230 billion in 1980 to $533 billion in 1994, to over $714 billion in 1997, and near $800 billion in 1999.” (p164) The trend seen in South America “reflects the broader pattern of global social polarization” (p 169) around the world.
Globalization has entered a period of crisis according to the writers of Politics of Empire, Chalmers Johnson, and Arundhati Roy. Savran would agree with Johnson that a narrative of globalization is “its claim to embody fundamental and inevitable technological developments rather than the conscious policies of Anglo-American elites.” (Johnson, 2004, p 260) This story appears to be collapsing as witnessed in South America. Another myth of globalization is failing, that of its historical inevitability as indigenous peoples reclaim their histories.
As ‘mega-capital’ or ‘transnational capital’ dominate world markets, “the interdependent activities of the sub-units of mega-capital are spatially separated and diversified into a great number of regions and single countries.” (Savran, 2004, p 126) This weakens the economic structure of globalized markets. Throughout the world increasing numbers of people mumble against the burden they bear for the aid of a global elite. During the early 21st century, South America saw a strong increase in public protests, often violent, against unfavorable government practices. Johnson warns against the danger of American bankruptcy, as funds continue to pour into inevitably unsustainable militarism. Globalization is pushing its limits because ultimately its neoliberal economic policies are not bringing peace to the world.
While thought the constructs of power, imperialism, and militarism construes a step toward comprehending viable peace, the next step is to actively work for this peace. To effectively resist these negative power structures, “we need to aim at real targets, wage real battles, and inflict real damage” (Roy, 2004, p 91) in order “to make it materially impossible for empire to achieve its aims.” (p 94) Depending on location, everyone is capable of resisting imperialism, corporations, or globalization by creating a realistic local target which will inevitably be located on the larger chain of globally connected markets. Thus there is the possibility of effectively organizing action against negative institution, or in other words for viable peace.
“We are together in this, all of us, and it’s our job to love each other, human, animal, and land, the device ocean loves shore, and shore loves and needs the ocean, even if they are different elements.” (Hogan, 2001, p 29) Linda Hogan writes about pain and healing. As a Native American woman, Hogan speaks of her people as broken, but healing, as survivors if their oppressed history. Throughout the world live survivors. Even as imperialism and militarism oppressively dominate, conquer, and destroy, there are those who continue to fight for freedom, human rights, and peace – as ordained by human needs, human love, not as ordained by a largely American hegemonic elite.
END NOTES:
1) Sungur Savran defines Eurasia as the region stretching from the Balkans through Russia, Turkey, the Middle East and into Central Asia, although acknowledging that historically the term has indicated the combined space of Europe and Asia. Eurasia is distinguished by Savran as the region newly independent in relation to the collapse of the Soviet Union, including regions such as the Middle East with ancient Soviet allegiances.
2) The Great Game is a term usually attributed to Arthur Connolly, used to relate the rivalry and strategic conflict between the British Empire and the Tsarist Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The classic Titanic Game period is generally regarded as running from approximately 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 a second less intensive phase followed. Many believe it still continues although the players may change over time.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Game)
REFERENCES:
Ed. Freeman, Alan, & Kagarlitsky, Boris. (2004) Politics of Empire: Globalization in Crisis.
London & Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press.
Hogan, Linda. (2001) The Woman Who Watches Over The World.
New York: W. W. Norton and Company
Johnson, Chalmers. (2004) The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the Demolish of The Republic.
Fresh York: Henry Holt & Company
Roy, Arundhati. (2004) An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire.
Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
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Filed under Monopoly Bankruptcy by on Feb 7th, 2011. 
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