Global Rivalries From the Cold War to Iraq

Kees Van Der Pijl

Description

This book offers a highly original analysis of world events in the light of the Iraq War. It explores the history and development of relations between major countries in the international community and the impact that successive wars and changes in the global political economy have had on the way states relate to each other today.



Tracing the liberal state structure back to the closing stages of the English Civil War and settlement in North America, it argues that the rise of the English-speaking West has created rivalries between contender states that are never entirely put to rest. With each round of Western expansion, new rivalries are created.



Offering a truly global analysis that covers every area of the world - from Europe and America to China, the Middle East, Latin America and Russia -- he analyses the development of international relations post WWII, and questions whether the neoliberal project and its human rights ideology have collapsed back into authoritarianism under the guise of the 'war on terror'.
1. Fractures and Faultlines in the Global Political Economy

2. Integrating Atlantic Europe

3. America’s Crusade in Asia and the Euro-Atlantic Rift

4. The Spectre of Social and Economic Democracy

5. Transnational Rivalries and the Neoliberal Turn

6. From Pinochet to the Reagan Doctrine

7. The Rapallo Syndrome and the Demise of the Soviet Union

8. America over Europe in the Balkans Crisis

9. The Rise of China as the New Contender

10. Energy Conflicts in the Post-Soviet Era

11. From Human Rights to the Global State of Emergency

References

Index

Sujets

• International Relations
• Political Science

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 août 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783719112
• Langue: English

Extrait

GLOBAL RIVALRIES
FROM THE COLD WAR TO IRAQ
Kees van der Pijl
 
 
 
 
 
 
First published 2006 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Kees van der Pijl 2006
The right of Kees van der Pijl to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7453 2542 4 hardback
ISBN 0 7453 2541 6 paperback
Epub ISBN 9781783719112
Kindle ISBN 9781783719129
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
 
 
 
 
 
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Sage Publications, B-42, Panchsheel Enclave, New Delhi 110 017
Typeset from disk by Star Compugraphics, Delhi
Printed in India by Chaman Enterprises, New Delhi
F OR K I
FOR ALL THE REASONS
Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Preface
List of Abbreviations
   1. F RACTURES AND F AULTLINES IN THE G LOBAL P OLITICAL E CONOMY
The Making of the ‘West’ and the Contender State Challenge
Systemic and Transnational Rivalries
Industrial Competition and Capitalist Discipline
   2. I NTEGRATION AND R IVALRY IN E UROPE AND THE M IDDLE E AST
Cold War Antecedents of European Integration
Anglo-American Redistribution and State Formation in the Middle East
The Resurrection of the Strong State in France
   3. A MERICA ’ S C RUSADE IN A SIA AND THE E URO -A TLANTIC R IFT
The Illusion of an Atlantic Europe
Asian Killing Fields: Indo-China and Indonesia
Gaullist France and the Remaking of the Post-War Atlantic Order
   4. T HE S PECTRE OF S OCIAL AND E CONOMIC D EMOCRACY
May 1968 and the New Freedom
The Middle East and OPEC as New Contenders
The Drive for a New International Economic Order
   5. T RANSNATIONAL R IVALRIES AND THE N EOLIBERAL T URN
Contending Forces in the Strategy of Tension
Disciplining the Heartland in the Interregnum
Neoliberal Civil Society against the State
   6. F ROM P INOCHET TO THE R EAGAN D OCTRINE
Latin America’s Contender State Experience and Atlantic Rivalry
Oligarchic Privatisation in the Debt Trap
Attacking the Weak Links of the ‘Third World’: Africa and Central America
   7. T HE R APALLO S YNDROME AND THE D EMISE OF THE S OVIET U NION
The USSR as a Contender State
Atlantic Rivalries in the New Cold War
Rival Responses to Gorbachev’s New Look
   8. A MERICA OVER E UROPE IN THE B ALKANS C RISIS
Social Forces in the Clinton Globalisation Offensive
Rival Responses to the Crisis in Yugoslavia
Americanisation of the European Union against the United States?
   9. T HE R ISE OF C HINA AS THE N EW C ONTENDER
China’s Reintegration into the Capitalist World Economy
The Asian Crisis and the Disruption of the Japan-centred Order
The Asia-Pacific Geopolitical Triangle—The US, Japan and China
10. E NERGY C ONFLICTS IN THE P OST -S OVIET E RA
From ‘Iran–Contra’ to the First Gulf War
Struggles over Caspian Energy Resources and the ‘New Silk Road’
Afghanistan, 11 September, and the Invasion of Iraq
11. F ROM H UMAN R IGHTS TO THE G LOBAL S TATE OF E MERGENCY
The Aesthetics of Imperialist Geopolitics
Rival Concepts of Human Rights
From Humanitarian ‘Just Wars’ to the Global War on Terror

References
Index
About the Author
List of Tables and Figures
Tables
1.1    Heartland-Contender Development, Revolution and War, 1834–1913 (cotton spindlage capacity) 1.2    Heartland-Contender Development, Revolution and War, 1880–1957 (steel production) 3.1    Heartland-Contender Development, Arms Race and War (passenger car production) 4.1    Industrial Growth Rates in Middle East and North African Countries and Major Political Changes, 1960–80 6.1    Heartland-Contender Development in the Debt Crisis (weighted GNP per capita) 6.2    Wealthiest Individuals in Latin America, 2003, in US$ Billion 8.1    Wealthiest Americans and Western Europeans, 2003, in US$ Billion (compared to 2000) 8.2    Three Orientations in European Capital (1992) and ERT Founding Members 9.1    Wealthiest Individuals in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Other Emerging Asia, 2003, in US$ Billion 9.2    Private Sector Debt Exposure in Asia to Main Creditor Countries, 1998, US$ Billion 9.3    Foreign Direct Investment in China, 1979–2002 (US$ billion) 10.1    Wealthiest Individuals in the Middle East (2003) in US$ Billion 10.2    Wealthiest Individuals in Russia (2003) in US$ Billion 11.1    Human Rights in the Lockean and the Contender State Contexts

Figures
1.1    Three Spheres of Rivalry 8.1    Clustered Joint Directorates, 100 Transnational Corporations, 1992 8.2    Clustered Joint Directorates, 150 Transnational Corporations, 2000
Preface
In early 2003, when the UN Security Council refused to give the United States and Britain the go-ahead for an invasion of Iraq, the Murdoch press blasted those withholding their consent as cowards, pasting weasel heads and necks on photos of French, German and Russian diplomats. In the United States there was a boycott of French wine, and French fries were re-baptised ‘freedom fries’ to express disgust. The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, more seriously put the blame for the highly unpopular decision to go to war on … President Jacques Chirac! It seemed as if rivalries were reverting to the period preceding the First World War, when, to give but one example, scientists in Paris ‘discovered’ that German urine was more toxic than French.
How, then, does the furious dispute over Iraq square with the idea that history has forever moved beyond rivalry, a thesis most famously developed by Francis Fukuyama in his ‘End of History’ argument of 1989? Hasn’t the world become unified under a single economic system—capitalism—with an ‘international community’ policing it in the name of democracy and human rights against a handful of remaining ‘rogue states’? This was obviously the view of Condoleezza Rice, then US national security adviser (although she had earlier expressed scepticism). After the invasion, Rice qualified the French principle of ‘multipolarity’ as ‘a theory of rivalry, of competing interests and, at its worst, competing values’, belonging to a bygone age. 1 A comparable position has been adopted by the Left, or so it seems—witness Hardt and Negri’s best-selling Empire. Their claim—that world capital has in the process of globalisation effectively absorbed the state system into itself— has become a near-orthodoxy, well beyond the alternative, ‘anti’-globalisation movement. 2
My argument in this study is that the appearance of planetary unification and homogenisation of the global political economy, not unlike the situation a century ago, hides a more profound drift to social crisis and conflagration. Early in the First World War, Lenin criticised Karl Kautsky’s expectation that the imperialist states would eventually draw together and jointly exploit the colonial periphery (the stage of ‘ultra-imperialism’). Lenin claimed that under capitalist conditions, this could only be a temporary respite from rivalry. ‘There is no doubt that the development is going in the direction of a single world trust that will swallow up all enterprises and all states without exception,’ he wrote in 1915.

But the development in this direction is proceeding under such stress, with such a tempo, with such contradictions, conflicts, and convulsions—not only economical, but also political, national, etc.—that before a single world trust will be reached, before the respective national finance capitals will have formed a world union of ‘ultra-imperialism’, imperialism will inevitably explode. 3

Many things have changed since these lines were written (not least, of course, the rise and demise of the Soviet state born in the Russian revolution). But the argument against the idea of a stable, collectively managed capitalist world order remains valid. The process of breakneck liberalisation driven by transnational capital creates profound instabilities; the mindless propagation and practice of privatisation and economic competition produces extreme inequality and precariousness; and those worst affected cling to ethnic, national, and religious bonds, which are themselves in the process of dissolution and transformation. Adding to this explosive brew today are the deleterious effects of the exhaustion of society and nature by capitalist exploitation. 4
The rivalries apparent in the contemporary world are again being exacerbated by the very speed of the unifying drive of capitalist ‘globalisation’. But these rivalries do not develop at random. They evolve according to a specific historical structure which contains, from the start, the ‘ultra-imperialist’ moment in the form of a relatively unified ‘West’ . 5 As I will argue in Chapter 1 , this structure first emerged in the struggle between a liberal, English-speaking, Protestant-Christian world created through overseas settlement and trade in the seventeenth century (what I call the Lockean heartland ); and a series of contender states beginning with France. In this struggle, in which the rulers of France and later rivals of the West faced the already established primacy of the heartland, two state/society complexes have crystallised. 6 In the Atlantic heartland, the capitalist class became the ruling class as an already transnational force, maximising its freedom under the liberal state theorised by John Locke. In a society like France, on the other hand, a state class imposed itself on society; from Colbert to Napoleon (or even, some would say, de Gaulle) it demarcated a concentric unit developing under a rationalistic planning doctrine.
The original constellation of an English-speaking West confronted by France develops over time into ever more complex patterns, eventually comprising the entirety of the global