The logic of american Imperialism

The announcement of Osama Bin Laden execution in the north western province of Pakistan provoked the global media into a frenzy of hysteria. However, this saturation of media bias maligned with bin laden’s corpse being regurgitated every 15 minutes on news bulletins; some how legitimised 4 wars, millions dead and hundreds of thousand displaced.  yet Underneath this veneer of western values and sanctimonious hypocrisy are the structural aims of western imperialism.

Yet to uncover this ruthless logic it is necessary to evaluate of the structural dynamics of American and European capital in the 1970s. Although American gun boat diplomacy has its roots in the 19th century using the much accredited corollary to the Monroe Doctrine and manifest destiny. Its territorial expansion, as an offensive policy had been in decline since McKinley era. However, with the onset of the capitalism structural crises in the 70s American foreign policy sought to reconfigure its latent territorial interests with the demands of capital accumulation. These augmentations lead to the entrenchment of strategic aims into international financial institutions cementing the World Bank and the IMF into a neo liberal regime, which had the capacity to launch American territorial aims .

This meant that capital accumulation changed from investing capital in production to accumulation by disposition or as Marx calls primitive accumulation. This brought on a wave of reforms, which were designed to increase the rate of exploitation. This sought to increase productivity, deregulate labour markets, and facilitating unemployment. These tools which are synonymous with the freidminaite era were used explicitly to smash workers living standards in the hope that profitability would restore global out put.

Privatisation as an instrument was used to depose the general public of their innate rights, such as housing, education, health and even water. The role of the state was transformed form providing employment and other vital services  to actually deflate the productive forces within the economy while accelerating the legal technical and institutional arms of the state in benefit of private investors. This reconfiguration to financial capital were designed to undermine labour power and the states ability to regulate capital with financial controls. Market forces were also used to reshape political structure in ways, which are favourable to United States binding them to new avenues of investment.

This development appeared to unhinge labour power ability to influence capital accumulation, as it bypassed the labour process. Financial mechanisms such as market forces and wage repression were used to restructure the industrial base of the global economy governed by finical centres like Wall Street and city of London. This might seam at odds with imperialism, but by the end of the cold war American foreign policy had remoulded every significant international institution into its image.

This seaming resounding victory for western values above all else western capitalism meant that financialization had emphatically over come the power of labour, which had paralysed capitalism since its inception. This was coupled with the assumption that Neo Liberal capitialism had restored profitability in the global economy. This lead to a frenzy of financial speculation fuelled by export driven economies based in the developing world namely china. This co-dependency was forged by uneven development that brought new avenues of investment to the US. Subsequently china gave huge amounts of loans to the US , which used the dollar reserve fund, to accelerated a mass wave of speculation based on reliability of Chinese capital.

This was compounded by the US to guarantee its currency, as the reserve fund for the global economy. Exporting nation such as china and Germany would sell their exports favourable to Americans competitiveness, while mentaining a much higher rate of interest to American investment. It was this balance of payments, which allowed the US to maintain its influence over the global economy. However this use of financialization could only maintain it self if the financial bubble grew exponentially with out it bursting,

There is a much more acute insight which needs to be articulated this is as Marx pointed out in the 1850s in England when the contradiction between coals out put in relation to production reached its peak. We can see happening to day, as peak oil is an ever looming reality. From this position it was logical for the US to invade Iraqi (in relation to its territorial aims) as it had capacity to marginalise China, as a major strategic actor influencing oil producing states. It was conceived that it could also neutralised china from exerting their strategic agenda by undermining China’s capacity to accelerate its growth by way of industrialisation. if the entire global out put of oil was controlled by American interest it neutralised china’s ability to influence their aims by exerting more pressure on the US currency reserve.

However, by insisting on financialization, as opposed to the productive role of the industrialisation process it lead to the emergency of china and Germany to replace the US as the main exporter nation. This meant that global economy had been separated into two distinct patterns in production these categories are creditors and debtor states. Creditor states create huge surpluses in the balance of payments, which are then invested into debtor states.

This can be seen in EU with Germany using wage repression on the one hand and export their commodities to countries, like Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece. It’s this co-dependency, which internalised a huge contradiction in the global economy. The U.S. has one of the greatest budget deficits to such an extent that they owe 1.7 trillion to china. Yet it used mechanisms within the financial system to offload its deficit by manipulating its currency reserves. However, with the emergence of China and Germany as global exporters undermining US dominance created a cataclysmic contradiction in relation to its territorial aims

With the invasion of Iraq American strategic aims went through the roof expanding its territorial interest around the world. This was aided by the wave of white revolutions which swept most of central and Eastern Europe in the mid 2000s. However, with the onset of the finical crisis we saw the complete destruction of pro western regimes both in central and Eastern Europe. The starkest result of this could be seen with the war with Georgia and Russia. The most heavily entrenched pro western satellite on the Russian border was completely smashed. Ukraine, another pro western regime that was assimilated into western sphere of influence after the collapse of the soviet block has completely reconfigured its strategic interest from pro western to pro Russian.

Ukraine has now a pro Russian government which allows its entire Russian fleet to be moored in the Crimea. However, more worryingly is the 4th fleet established in 2008 in the Caribbean it is argued that its strategic aims is to curb the expansion of leftist governments in South America particularly Chavez in Venezuela while also building military bases in Colombia.

The U.S. reliance on using finical instruments to further accelerate the entrenchment of pro market reforms had massive implications in Egypt. This was fuelled by using futures markets to drive up the price of commodities especially wheat which is seen as a new bio fuel. The driving prices of wheat meant that bead was at a premium with 20 million people living on two dollars a day it could mean starvation.

This sparked a huge wave of factory occupations in Mahalla 2006, which generalised though the whole country. Since Sadat took power in 1970 Egypt has been committed to a pro American stance both territorially and in economic reforms which entrenched a neo liberal orthodox into the fabric of its economy. When Sadat signed the Camp David accord 1978 he effectively neutralised Egypt as a regional power within the Middle East. Even using Egypt to legitimise aggression perused by Israeli onto Palestine particularly in operation cast lead.

This illustrates that the driving nature of market forces internalised a massive contradiction to the US strategic and territorial interests. this contradiction of driving for higher profitable and its strategic aims to neutralise Egypt as a regional power sparked the first major victory of the Egyptian working class for over 3 decades in the Mahalla in 2006. It was this victory ascertained through the factory occupations and strikes which augmented independent trade unions, general strikes, protests and occupations that hammered the last nail into the coffin of Mubarak’s regime

The role of American imperialism has a long history starting in the mid 19 century with the invasion of Mexico to the present day it has been involved in 145 incursions in this period. Yet the static inertia, which governs American foreign policy, as static units being multiplied by competition, offers little insights into how reconfiguration of power blocks can emerge and also the point of antagonism.

It’s the points of weakness both in the global economy and its territorial interests of imperialism that offer the greatest insights into resistance. This is seen in Egypt and Tunisia although this is far from being concluded it shows the possibilities of resistance from bellow. The conviction of ordinary people to make a leap of faith into hart of history shows conclusively that revolutionary socialism is not a redundant phrase condemned to the footnotes of history, but is based on the actuality of struggle from bellow. More importantly imperialism is the manifestation of capital to remove the barbarism of war first you must remove the logic from underneath it.