04-09-2004, 05:22 PM
imperialism does not pertain exclusively to the occupation of foriegn lands. it can also apply to the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations.
Quote:Towards a new century of American imperialism
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What will be the shape of the next century? And how will the world’s two hundred states apportion the various roles? If some will have more influence than others, one - the United States - is doing everything to maintain its primacy using its economic, military and cultural strength. Unilaterally and for its sole benefit, it intends to fix the rules for the "electronic era" in order to assure itself global electronic mastery in the next century.
by Herbert I Schiller
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How can the United States maximise its current condition of singular power? At the governing level, few question the desirability of pursuing an "imperial policy", however euphemistically it is described. The debate swirls around the best way of achieving it. One of the more "moderate" strategists puts it this way: "The aim of American foreign policy is to work with other like-minded actors to ’improve’ the market place, to increase compliance with basic norms, by choice if possible, by necessity - i.e., coercion - if need be. At the core, regulation [of the international system] is an imperial doctrine in that it seeks to promote a set of standards we endorse - something not to be confused with imperialism, which is a foreign policy of exploitation (1)".
Other American voices are less shy about using tougher terminology in prescribing the United States’ role in the world arena. For example, Irving Kristol, a long-standing theorist of a belligerent conservatism, shrugs off the notion of constraints and takes for granted an "emerging American imperium". This more muscular approach is still diffident, however, about adopting the term "imperialism".
"One of these days", writes Kristol, "the American people are going to awaken to the fact that we have become an imperial nation." He hastens to reassure his readers that this is not an intentional development: "it happened because the world wanted it to happen." Elaborating this curious explanation, he asserts that "a great power can slide into commitments without explicitly making them (2)".
Under his imperium, Kristol sees Europe embracing its dependence on the United States and relinquishing an independent foreign policy. The Europeans "are dependent nations, though they have a very large measure of local autonomy." Something akin, perhaps, to the Palestine Authority on the West Bank? Kristol himself is bemused by what he sees happening. He distinguishes it from the older European imperialism with its brutal overt coercion, remarking that "our missionaries live in Hollywood". But he concludes on a bleak note: "It is an imperium with a minimum of moral substance. While the people of the world may want it and need it now, one wonders how soon they will weary of it (3)." Nonetheless, Kristol is among those who see US global control as an unproblematic condition: rivals can be subdued by one means or another.
However, the most influential view among the American governing class - up to 1997 at least - expresses doubt that full political control can be achieved. Though completely at ease with the idea of an American 21st century, it accepts the necessity of enlisting partners, however temporarily, in running the world. Richard Haass, director of foreign studies at the Brookings Institution and a former assistant to President George Bush, is a proponent of this prevailing view. He writes approvingly of the Gulf war as a model for future policy.
In his book The Reluctant Sheriff, Haass recommends that the United States should be the global sheriff. In his scenario, unlike the policeman, the sheriff is more of a part-time worker. He comes to work when there is a demand to organise a raid on some recalcitrant powers or "rogue states" - that is, areas or groups that do not accept US-imposed arrangements - and he assembles posses of "willing states" as the enforcers. In this mainstream American view, a frontier species of vigilantism is advocated as foreign policy.
How well a "posse" policy will fare in a world with three billion people below the poverty line, and nuclear warheads scattered around a dozen or more regions like melons in a field, is not easy to imagine. Underlying these strategic outlooks is an uncomplicated reading of the outcome of the cold war. "We won, and the other side not only lost but disappeared (4)." With this interpretation in hand, the geopoliticians weave their imperial reveries