Global Capitalism and American Empire
Leo Panitch & Sam Gindin ‘American imperialism… has been made plausible and attractive in part by the insistence that it is not imperialistic.’ Harold Innis, 19481 I The American empire is no longer concealed. In March 1999, the cover of the New York Times Magazine displayed a giant clenched fist painted in the stars and stripes of the US flag above the words: ‘What The World Needs Now: For globalization to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is’. Thus was featured Thomas Friedman’s ‘Manifesto for a Fast World’, which urged the United States to embrace its role as enforcer of the capitalist global order: ‘…the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist…. The hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.’ Four years later, in January 2003, when there was no longer any point in pretending the fist was hidden, the whole cover of the Magazine featured an essay by Michael Ignatieff with the words, ‘The American Empire: Get Used It ’: ‘…[W]hat word but “empire” describes the awesome thing that America is becoming? …Being an imperial power… means enforcing such order as there is in the world and doing so in the American interest.’2 Of course, the American state’s geopolitical strategists had already taken this tack. Among those closest to the Democratic Party wing of the state, Zbigniew Brzezinski did not mince words in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American
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Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, asserting that ‘the three great imperatives of geo-political strategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence amongst the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.’3 In the same year the Republican intellectuals who eventually would write the Bush White House’s National Security Strategy founded the Project for... [continues]
Leo Panitch & Sam Gindin ‘American imperialism… has been made plausible and attractive in part by the insistence that it is not imperialistic.’ Harold Innis, 19481 I The American empire is no longer concealed. In March 1999, the cover of the New York Times Magazine displayed a giant clenched fist painted in the stars and stripes of the US flag above the words: ‘What The World Needs Now: For globalization to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is’. Thus was featured Thomas Friedman’s ‘Manifesto for a Fast World’, which urged the United States to embrace its role as enforcer of the capitalist global order: ‘…the hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist…. The hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.’ Four years later, in January 2003, when there was no longer any point in pretending the fist was hidden, the whole cover of the Magazine featured an essay by Michael Ignatieff with the words, ‘The American Empire: Get Used It ’: ‘…[W]hat word but “empire” describes the awesome thing that America is becoming? …Being an imperial power… means enforcing such order as there is in the world and doing so in the American interest.’2 Of course, the American state’s geopolitical strategists had already taken this tack. Among those closest to the Democratic Party wing of the state, Zbigniew Brzezinski did not mince words in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American
1
Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, asserting that ‘the three great imperatives of geo-political strategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence amongst the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.’3 In the same year the Republican intellectuals who eventually would write the Bush White House’s National Security Strategy founded the Project for... [continues]
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