Gerald Toal seems to think that when we use the word "imperialism" we are
talking about US "imperialism" vis-a-vis the advanced capitalist countries
of Europe. He misses the point altogether.
It is now fairly clear, even to conservative geopoliticians, that the US,
Canada, and the advanced (rich) capitalist countries of Europe have
integrated their economies, and the ownership structure of their
corporations, into a single coherent entity. Politically, they act broadly
in concord toward the rest of the world. This new entity can be called
"NATO" for short.
For years now, people have been talking about "globalization" as an
economic phenomenon, characterized mainly by the effort by corporationas
based mostly in the NATO countries (plus Japan) to achieve dominance of all
of the world's economies; most people see this as a peaceful, if not
necessarily benign, process.
Those of us who have thought a lot about earlier attempts by countries like
the US and Britain (and their classic multinational corporations, like The
United Fruit Company and Lever Bros.) to achieve this kind of dominance
over large chunks of the world are keenly aware that the economic side of
this effort/process always depends on political and ultimately military
force: colonization, gunboatization, etc. Economic imperialism followed the
flag.
NATO, I believe, has a flag. Now economic dominance of the world -- the
whole world -- is again turning out to be a case of trade following the
flag -- the NATO flag. Or, to be precise, multinational core-area
capitalism -- perhaps including Japan and perhaps not -- has fashioned for
itself an international military machine with which it expects to be able
to police all of the counties of the world, forcing them with threats
and/or military intervention, to do whatever the NATO countries and their
corporations want them to do. I call it neo-gunboatism.
The Iraq war alliance was a step in this direction, but only a step: the
fig-leaf of UN authority over the process was still in place, and it was
not at all difficult to persuade civil society that Saddam Hussein had to
be stopped in Kuwait and in his oppression internally.
Now the process is open and naked. The NATO bloc will threaten and if
necessary bomb and invade any country that is too small and weak* to resist
NATO economic and political (but ultimately econmic) domination. I mean
precisely: allow the net flow of wealth to go spatially from a given
country to the NATO part of the world. This is the essence of
globalization. Always public opinion will be advised that the leaders of
the target are demons.
All of this is being tested in Yugoslavia. Again we have a country that is
ruled by an antihero; a thug. It is easy -- well, maybe not quite that easy
-- to convince the public in the NATO countries that the effort is aimed at
stopping ethnocide and perhaps genocide and hence deserves support.
But, had there been no Milosevic and Serbia, there would have been another
country that would have served just as well to test the new military
machine; a weak country with equally nasty and vicious leadership. The list
of qualifying target countries is quite long.
The plan is to eventually dominate even the large countries -- Iran, India,
China, et al. -- through threats of one sort or another. Thus: to dominate
the entire world. The response of China's public opinion -- civil society
-- to the embassy bombing makes it certain that the Chinese understand
that this process will, in time, reach their boundaries.
This is the new imperialism, Gerald. Those of us who see a need to resist
it -- just as we resisted colonialism and neocolonialism in the past** --
see that our first duty is to work for an end of the bombing of Yugoslavia.
Then and only then can we use other devices to stop the ethnocide and
killings in Kosovo.
Jim Blaut
*A small country need not, however, be a weak country: witness Cuba.
** Still old-fashined colonialism in Puerto Rico and other islands in the
Caribbean and Pacific; something like the old colonialism in Timor;
etcetera...
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