Introduction
Mapping the emerging global
economic, political and military configurations requires that we examine
regions and countries along several dynamic policy axis:
1 Capitalist versus anti-capitalist
2 Neoliberal versus anti-neoliberal
3 Austerity versus anti-austerity
4 War command centers and war zones
5 Political change and socio-economic continuity
6 New Order and political decay
Though many of these
dimensions overlap, they also highlight the complexity and influence of local
and national versus global power relations.
We will first identify and
classify the regimes and emerging movements, which fall into each of these
categories, and then proceed to generalize about current ‘global’ trends and
future perspectives based on approximations of the real correlation of forces.
Capitalism versus Anti-Capitalism
Capitalism is the only
economic system throughout the world. However, it has and continues to
experience periods of severe crisis, stagnation and breakdown. Several regimes continue
to declare themselves ‘socialist’ (like Cuba, Venezuela and China) even as they
pursue large scale foreign investments, establish free trade zones and provide
incentives to stimulate expansion of the private sector.
Anti-capitalist parties, movements
and trade unions have emerged and some still engage in large-scale
class-struggles. But others have capitulated, like Syriza in Greece, and
Refundacion Comunista in Italy, which renounced any anti-capitalist pretense
and embraced neo-liberal variants of capitalism.
Anti-capitalist tendencies
are at best implicit in the mass working class strikes occurring in China,
India and South Africa and explicitly by minor parties in Europe, Asia, South
America and elsewhere. Much more significant are the conflicts and struggles
between variants of capitalism: neo-liberal and anti-neoliberal regimes and
movements; and between austerity and anti-austerity regimes and movements.
In military terms, conflicts
can best be understood by differentiating between ‘war (command) centers’
in the imperial countries and ‘war zones’.
Neoliberal and Anti-Neoliberal Correlations of Power
The balance of power has
shifted toward pro-neoliberal regimes over the past two years. Even where
political regime changes have occurred, they have not been accompanied by any
significant shifts toward anti-neoliberal policies.
Latin America has witnessed
the biggest shift toward hard-right neoliberal regimes and policies. Rightwing
extremists won presidential elections in Argentina and legislative elections in
Venezuela. In Brazil the so-called ‘Workers Party’ regime has embraced a
neoliberal austerity program. In Bolivia, the social democratic Movement to
Socialism lost the recent referendum allowing a 3rd term
re-election for President Evo Morales. The organized forces that defeated the
referendum were predominantly hardline neo-liberals.
Elsewhere, in Latin America
political changes, from hardline neoliberal presidents to ostensible social
democrats (Chile and El Salvador) and nationalists (Peru), simply led to the
continuation of free market economic policies. Even socialist regimes, like
Cuba, have introduced market incentives and free trade zones for foreign
multi-nationals.
In the Middle East and North
Africa, popular revolts against incumbent neoliberal despots were violently
suppressed. Recycled neoliberal military autocrats and politicians returned to
power in Egypt, Tunisia, Israel, Iraq and Yemen.
Iran, under the recently
elected ‘reformist’ Rohani regime, has opened the oil and gas fields to
foreign capital and captured about 40% of the legislative deputies in the
February 2016 election.
In Asia, neoliberals, who
took power in recent elections in India and Indonesia, are moving to
de-regulate and promote foreign multi-national capital penetration. China and
Russia have moved to facilitate financial capital flows – resulting in
multi-billion-dollar capital flight and the relocation of new billionaire
families to Canada, England, the US and other Western countries.
In Europe, Scandinavian and Low Countries,
Social Democrats have embraced and deepened neoliberal policies even as they
lose support to rightwing anti-immigrant parties.
In the Baltic states of
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania hardline neoliberals have imposed harsh austerity
programs provoking protests of no great political consequences, as the
opposition has promoted the same policies.
Russia, under Putin, has
succeeded in the reconstruction of the state and economy after the destructive
policies of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. But apart from ending the flagrant pillage
of the economy by a gangster-ridden oligarchy, Russia is still an oil-dependent
state in which billionaires invest and disinvest with facility.
Greece, which became a
bankrupt vassal state under the rule of corrupt rightwing parties, experienced
an electoral revolt in January of 2015, electing a supposedly leftist “anti-neoliberal”
party. Syriza under the leadership of Alexander Tsipras embraced a
brutal European Union – IMF austerity program plunging Greece deeper into debt,
stagnation, poverty and vassalage.
In Portugal, an
anti-austerity alliance between the Socialist (social democrats) and the
Communist and Left Bloc parties formed a new government. However, under
pressure from the EU, it capitulated, surrendering its tepid anti-austerity
proposals.
In Canada, the opposition
Liberal Party defeated the Conservatives, offering cosmetic changes and
promptly reneged on its promises to end austerity.
In Europe, the main
anti-neoliberal, anti-austerity parties are rightwing-conservatives who have
won election in Poland and Hungary and opposition parties like the National
Front in France.
The major exception is in
Spain where a leftist party, Podemos, has embraced an anti-austerity
program, even as it offered to form a coalition government with the neoliberal Socialist
Party. The coalition regime never came about.
The return, continuation and
triumph of neoliberal and austerity parties and policies occur despite a
deepening economic crisis and growing popular hostility.
In the Middle East, North
Africa, the Baltic and Eastern European states, Egypt, Tunisia, Lithuania and
Poland, repression has undercut leftist opposition.
Secondly, nationalist parties
and conservative regimes have pre-empted attacks on austerity as is the case in
France and Hungary and have marginalized the Left.
Thirdly, international
tensions, wars, coups and military build-ups in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Turkey
and Southeast Asia have temporarily undercut popular opposition to neoliberal
and austerity programs.
In the Ukraine, the US-backed
neoliberal regime has virtually collapsed and is widely discredited. The
problem is that the most aggressive opposition comes from the neo-Nazi Right!
In the short-run,
international conflicts have temporarily distracted popular opposition to
neoliberalism. However, over time, the wars, coups and military destruction are
exacerbating the domestic crisis, as refuges flood and threaten to disintegrate
the European Union.
EU sanctions toward Russia
over the Ukraine exacerbated the economic crisis.
The Saudi-Turkey-US-EU-sponsored
terror war against Syria and its allies heightens tensions and dampens
investment in the region.
In other words,
neoliberal/austerity regimes are threatened less by internal opposition than
they are by the expansion of ‘war zones’, emanating from ‘imperial
war centers’.
War Centers and War Zones
The economic and political
configurations and divisions, which we have described, emphasize the varieties
of capitalist regimes, the advance of neoliberalism and the emergence of
variations among capitalists (austerity versus anti-austerity). US and EU
militarism has deepened cleavages between emergent (China) and re-emergent
(Russia) capitalist powers.
The political-economic map
and the correlation of forces are deeply affected by military conflicts.
Wars, coups and insurgencies
profoundly impact the scope, depth and character of socio-economic systems,
above and beyond the dichotomies stated above.
Essentially the global
military divisions can be understood through identifying war (imperial
command) centers and war zones.
War centers are countries and
regimes, which plan, organize, fund and execute military action against other
countries. The war centers usually are run by imperialist regimes, which span
the globe with military bases in order to defend and promote financial and
multi-national corporation domination in other countries.
The war centers, form
alliances, but also compete among themselves; they have follower regimes
providing bases, mercenary soldiers and political support, even to the point of
sacrificing their own economic goals in order to serve the dominant war
centers. Follower regimes participate only at the periphery of decision-making.
War centers have global
interests (US, EU), regional interests (Saudi Arabia and Israel – the Middle
East) and local interests (Ukraine – Crimea).
The war centers with global
interests have clearly defined adversaries: They target emerging military and
economic competitors, like Russia and China; nationalist regimes, like Venezuela,
Syria and Iran; popular anti-imperialist movements (Hezbollah in Lebanon) and
Islamist anti-Western movements (Taliban in Afghanistan). The war centers, at
the same time, correlate with neoliberal regimes and destroy or undermine
lucrative markets and prosperous sites for investments by expanding the war
zones.
War zones, defined by the US
and the EU, have included Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Ukraine and
earlier Yugoslavia. The ensuing wars succeeded in ousting incumbent regimes and
splintering target countries, but failed to consolidate political control and,
above all, destroyed hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, trade,
financial and resource extraction opportunities.
The war centers have engaged
in three levels of military engagement: (1) High intensity, signifying long-term
large-scale warfare involving massive expenditures and commitments of
troops such as Iraq and Afghanistan; (2) Middle level intensity, involving
US-EU air wars and the use of proxy mercenaries as in Syria, Ukraine and Libya;
and (3) Low intensity wars providing military support to regional allies, e.g.
Israel’s onslaughts against the Palestinians, Saudi Arabia’s assault on Yemen
and Turkey’s war against the Kurds in Iraq, Syria and Kurdish regions of Turkey.
The war centers in the EU and
US have differences over China. The EU favors market expansion, while the US
seeks to intensify the military encirclement of China.
Likewise, Europe and the US
have differences over sanctions against Russia: the economic elite in the
European Union, with billions of Euros invested in Russia is divided. Meanwhile
the US mobilizes its clients in Poland and the Baltic countries to escalate
military operations on Russia’s borders.
The growth of military
tensions reflects both economic competition (US-EU versus China) and military
expansion (US-EU coups in Ukraine).
Conclusion
The growth and advance of
neoliberal and austerity regimes are largely the outcome of domestic or
internal class conflicts. These, in turn, are the result of political-electoral
contests where the imperial powers play an indirect role (mostly
financial/propaganda).
In other words, the advance
of neoliberal capitalism is not a result of imperial wars. It conquers because
of its electoral advances and because of the defeats, retreats and
capitulations of the trade unions and leftist political parties.
The limits of neoliberalism
have been clearly set by destructive wars from the imperial military centers;
the sanctions imposed on independent capitalist countries; and the alliances
with destructive, aspiring regional hegemons (Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia).
The prolonged war economy and
the neoliberal policies of the imperial centers have concentrated wealth,
undermined economic growth, provoked downward social mobility and led to
massive population displacement in war zones.
Widespread malaise among
voters subject to the destabilization and disintegration of the European Union
and the brutal concentration of wealth, power and privilege within the US has
led to the emergence of social democratic and rightwing nationalist mass
electoral movements.
High intensity warfare and
prolonged austerity and social polarization have created a chaotic political
universe and a multitude of diverse conflicts within the capitalist system.
If the anti-capitalist left
is nowhere near overthrowing the system, the system may self-destruct, in a war
of all against all: the great sow devouring her own progeny.
Note
James Petras's latest books include:
- James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer (2014), Extractive Imperialism in the Americas: Capitalism’s New Frontier, published by Brill (Leiden/Boston) (Studies in Critical Social Sciences Series).
- James Petras (2014), The Politics of Empire: The US, Israel and the Middle East, published by Clarity Press, Atlanta.
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