They Can Blow Up Bridges, But They Don’t Have the Will to Build Them
Vijay Prashad
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THE countries of the global north are awash with weapons systems that have the capacity to blow up the world many times over. Not only do the countries in the global north have armies that are lethal and dangerous, but they are the largest exporters of weapons to the rest of the world, fuelling conflicts that could be settled by diplomacy. The larger the arsenal of weapons, the greater the confidence that they will be the arbiter of disputes – and so, even petty problems that can be resolved by negotiations escalate rapidly into war. And, for the countries of the global north, the idea of diplomacy itself has been reduced to ‘military diplomacy’, where the generals push aside the civilians and lead the conversation with braggadocio. It is this overwhelming military power of the global north that has inaugurated the stage of hyper-imperialism, an imperialism that is dangerous and decadent.
The name hyper-imperialism is chosen to indicate the frenetic character of this imperialism, the over-enthusiastic use of armed force to settle problems. It is a name that suits the attitude of the global north, which operates as a bloc through a political formation (the G-7), a military alliance (NATO), and an intelligence sharing operation (the Fourteen Eyes Intelligence network). The United States is at the core of this hyper-imperialist bloc, with the subordinate allies of Europe, Japan, and South Korea obediently following Washington’s whims. It is not enough to provoke a war in Ukraine by pushing NATO eastwards, but the global north’s hyper-imperialist bloc is now poking and prodding in eastern Asia through the attempted expansion of NATO and through provocations regarding Taiwan. It is almost as if the hyper-imperialist bloc desires a massive world war that would be focused on its adversaries, what it considers its ‘near-peer rivals’ of China and Russia.
DANGEROUS
A new study by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research (Hyper-Imperialism: A Dangerous and Decadent New Stage, January 2024) points out that the previous estimates of US military spending are grossly undercounts. In fact, a proper analysis of the US budget shows that the military spending in 2022 was 1.53 trillion dollars. If you add to this the military budgets of the global north bloc, then it is clear that 74.3 per cent of actual world military spending in 2022 was by this grouping. It is the global north as well that is responsible for 72 per cent of arms exports. The control over arms and the ability to devastate countries makes the global north bloc dangerous. The United States and its allies were certainly defeated in Afghanistan and Iraq, but those withdrawals came after the US and its allies pummelled the countries, destroying their infrastructure and their possibilities.
At the same time as the global north spends vast amounts of its precious resources on the military, it has been cutting its net investment as a share of gross domestic product (the United States, for instance, is a net importer of capital, which is key to a financialised wealth generation process and a crucial economic mechanism of US imperialism. The world’s capital assets are preponderantly in US dollars and feed the overall position of US monopoly-finance capital). This is the reason why it is accurate to say that the global north hyper-imperialist bloc is capable of blowing up bridges, but it is not capable of building them.
DECADENT
One of the notable features of the politics of the global north countries has been the absolute decline in the intellectual calibre of its leadership. The issue in the United States, for instance, is not merely the age of Joe Biden or the madness of Donald Trump. It is, in fact, that neither Biden nor Trump, nor indeed Germany’s Scholz or France’s Macron have a project for their countries. None of these leaders provide a pathway out of the economic malaise in these countries, a malaise that has been deepened by the lack of productive investment and the inflationary pressure due to the war in Ukraine. Their speeches sound exhausted; their ideas are shop-worn. In fact, the lack of a project is what makes the ruling classes of the global north decadent.
In the United States, for instance, child poverty more than doubled last year from the year before, and overall poverty rates have increased to decade-long highs (this is the largest one year increase in poverty ever recorded). Part of this increase is due to the expiration of emergency measures put in place by the Biden administration. But this is not the only reason. There is simply no plan to re-energise the economy in areas forgotten by the ruling class, as factory deserts were shaped by the arbitrage calculations of financiers about forty years ago. The fight in the US Congress is over tax credits to enable the poor to get some income in hand, but nothing more than that. There is no project to end poverty. That makes the ruling class decadent in its worldview. It is out of this decadence that we see the rise of far-right forces.
ONE IMPERIALISM
The peaceful rise of the global south countries poses a comprehensive economic challenge to imperialist world dominance. For the first time in six hundred years, the Atlantic imperialist powers are confronted with a non-white economic force capable of countering them. The answer of the hyper-imperialist bloc is to move to force, either sanctions or war. The countries that are being threatened by the global north – particularly China and Russia – are largely defensive powers, with the military means to defend themselves but not to take on the military force of the global north. China’s military spending, for instance, is much smaller than that of the global north (it is responsible for 10.2 per cent of global military spending, with Russia responsible for 3 per cent and India for 2.8 per cent). The United States spends 21 times more on its military per person than China does on its military.
It is clear that the global south, in contrast to the global north, is not a bloc and certainly not a military bloc. The global south thus faces the extreme monopoly of military spending by the US-Led military bloc. This represents a clear and present danger to all countries of the global south; it presents an imminent danger to the continued existence of humankind and the planet. In turn, the single most important aspect of State power – that is, military power – the absolute central danger to the working classes of all countries, especially to the darker nations of the world, lies in the US-Led imperialist camp. Objectively, there is no such thing as sub-imperialism or non-western imperialist powers (such concepts are subjective deceptions that cloud over the factual realities).
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