U.S. imperialism, Europe, and the Middle East

Monthly Review, Nov, 2004 by Samir Amin

The analysis proposed here regarding the role of Europe and the Middle East in the global imperialist strategy of the United States is set in a general historical vision of capitalist expansion that I have developed elsewhere. (1) In this view capitalism has always been, since its inception, by nature, a polarizing system, that is, imperialist. This polarization--the concurrent construction of dominant centers and dominated peripheries, and their reproduction deepening in each stage--is inherent in the process of accumulation of capital operating on a global scale.

In this theory of the global expansion of capitalism the qualitative changes in the systems of accumulation, from one phase of its history to another, shape the successive forms of asymmetric centers/peripheries polarization, that is, of concrete imperialism. The contemporary world system will thus remain imperialist (polarizing) throughout the visible future, in so far as its fundamental logic remains dominated by capitalist production relations. This theory associates imperialism with the process of capital accumulation on a worldwide scale, which I consider as constituting a single reality whose various dimensions are in fact not separable. Thus it differs as much from the vulgarized version of the Leninist theory of "imperialism, the highest phase of capitalism" (as if the former phases of global expansion of capitalism were not polarizing), as from the contemporary postmodern theories that describe the new globalization as "post-imperialist."

1. Permanent Conflict of Imperialisms with Collective Imperialism

In its globalized deployment, imperialism was always conjugated in the plural, from its inception (in the sixteenth century) until 1945. The permanent and often violent conflict of imperialisms has occupied as decisive a place in the transformation of the world as class struggle, through which the fundamental contradictions of capitalism are expressed. Moreover, social strife and conflicts among imperialisms are closely articulated, and it is this articulation that has determined the course of really existing capitalism. The analysis that I have proposed in this respect differs vastly from that of the "succession of hegemonies." (2)

The Second World War ended in a major transformation in the forms of imperialism, substituting for the multiplicity of imperialisms in permanent conflict a collective imperialism. This collective imperialism represented the ensemble of the centers of the world capitalist system, or more simply, the triad: the United States and its external Canadian province, western and central Europe, and Japan. This new form of imperialist expansion has gone through various phases of its development, but it has been present ever since 1945. The hegemonic role of the United States must be located within this perspective, and every instance of this hegemony needs to be specified in its relation with the new collective imperialism. These questions pose problems, which are precisely those that I would wish to point out here.

The United States benefited enormously from the Second World War, which had ruined its principal contenders--Europe, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan. It was thus in a position to exert its economic hegemony, since more than half of global industrial production was concentrated in the United States, especially the technologies that would shape the development of the second half of the century. In addition, it alone possessed nuclear weapons--the new total weapon.

These dual advantages were nevertheless eroded in a relatively short period of time (within two decades) by dual recoveries, economic for capitalist Europe and Japan, and military for the Soviet Union. We must remember that this relative retreat of U.S. power resulted in lively speculation about American decline, contemplating even the ascent of possible alternative hegemonies (including Europe, Japan, and later China).

Gaullism was born at this time. Charles de Gaulle believed that the objective of the United States since 1945 had been to control the entire Old World (Eurasia). Washington had positioned itself strategically to divide Europe--which in de Gaulle's view spanned from the Atlantic to the Urals including "Soviet Russia"--by invoking the specter of aggression from Moscow, a specter in which de Gaulle never believed. His analysis was realistic, but he found himself almost alone. To the Atlanticism promoted by Washington he envisioned a counterstrategy founded on Franco-German reconciliation and the construction of a non-American Europe carefully excluding Great Britain, which he judged rightly to be the Trojan horse of Atlanticism. Europe could then open the way to reconciliation with "Soviet Russia." Reconciling and drawing together the three big European populations--French, German and Russian--would put a definite end to the American project of dominating the world. The internal conflict specific to the European project can thus be summarized as the choice between two alternatives: Atlantic Europe, in which Europe is an appendage of the American project, or non-Atlantic Europe (integrating Russia). This conflict is still not resolved. But later developments--the end of Gaullism, Great Britain's admission to the European Union, Europe's expansion toward the east, the Soviet collapse--have combined to vitiate the European project by its dual dilution in neoliberal economic globalization and in the political-military alignment with Washington. Moreover, these developments reinforce the strength of the collective character of triad imperialism.