This is the third and concluding part of a three-part essay. 
by Eddy Laing
Capital roams the planet seeking out markets to acquire and human labor to exploit. Success is the ability to yield super-profits. This neo-liberal dystopia comes to define every aspect of ‘developing world’ economies. The methods and scale of exploitation engineered in Central America by US and other capitals is typical of imperial socio-economic relationships established throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America.
At the same time that Guatemala provides sweatshops to the global textile sector, it provides a market for US agribusiness which — thanks to free trade agreements — can now export cotton, wheat, beef and processed foods into Guatemala and all of Central America. This trade will further ruin the already-stunted local agricultural sectors which cannot compete with large-scale industrial agri-business. This same dynamic also increases pressure on Guatemalan agriculture toward growing cash-crops, such as sugar cane for ethanol production in the US, rather than grains, vegetables or fruits for local consumption.
Just before the current financial crisis erupted, some of the biggest US and European banks were embroiled in what one observer called “a battle over the best assets in Latin America’s last big banking opportunity,” (32) a mad dash to acquire stakes in the financial sectors throughout Central and South America. During the last half of 2006, HSBC bought up Grupo Banistmo (Panama) and Citigroup acquired both Grupo Financiero Uno (multi-national) and Grupo Cuscatln (El Salvador), while Scotiabank bought Banco Interfin (Costa Rica) and GE Money (division of General Electric Co.) bought 49.9% of BAC International Bank (Panama).
Likewise, infrastructure has been mis-developed for as long as Euro-American colonialism and its local compradors have ruled the region. What surplus there is left behind in the country is expropriated by the local oligarchs and their military governments. In Guatemala, for example, that means primitive roads, little or no electrification, no sanitation or water systems in rural areas, and so on. The priorities for the government are in developing industrial parks for foreign-owned maquiladoras, building new airports and expanding the existing seaports to service import/export shipping, or making local improvements to telecommunications that can support ‘call centers’ for foreign businesses. (33) But even making basic improvements to infrastructure betrays the inequity of global capitalism. One maquiladora, the Villa Nueva textile mill, now gets its electricity from a re-commissioned rust-encrusted coal-fired power plant that was shipped in pieces from the town of Turners Falls, Connecticut for US$22 million. (34) †††
The neo-liberal paradigm
Neo-liberalism as an economic, political and ideological framework emerged in the mid-1970s. It privileges ‘free market’ over so-called ‘demand side’ capitalism which typified US state policies such as in the ‘Great Society’ programs of the 1960s and the ‘New Deal’ programs of the 1930s. Politically, neo-liberalism was ushered in by Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK, the latter declaring that “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.”
Neo-liberalism includes a powerful ideological component, therefore, which has preceded its economic forays and has been used to cover its tracks in the wake of its repeated failures (the 80-82 recession, 1987 equity market collapse, the East Asian financial collapse of the late 1980s, the US savings bank collapses of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the 90-92 recession, the ITC/’dot.com’ collapse in the mid-90s, the Enron/WorldCom/Tyco scandals of 2001-02, the 2001-04 recession, etc.) This ideological element deprecates ‘society’ and ‘citizen’ in favor of disparate groups of individual consumers, whose chief goal in life is to consume more. In academic circles, neo-liberalism has found resonance among certain ‘post-modernists’ who likewise situate the individual as an atom within a loose constellation of co-consumers, each with their own proclivities and market-niche identities.
The neo-liberal ‘supply side’ economic policies of capitalist states have included cannibalizing public infrastructure, deregulating or reducing existing state oversight responsibilities (such as in finance, common carrier transport, communications), and the sell-off of publicly held assets, such as water supplies, telecom infrastructure, broadcast communications, and so on.
These sell-offs should be understood as methods for accumulation by capital, as well as for pursuing ideological schema. Indeed, these accumulation activities further reveal just how moribund imperial societies are that they turn to feed on their own infrastructures in a desperate search for profits. For examples, during the period 1983-2005, the deregulation of the global telecom sector enabled no less than 20,210 mergers and acquisitions worth $4.3 trillion; the global broadcast communications sector was reformed through 10,233 deals worth $2.1 trillion. (35) These examples are joined by recombinations and sell-offs of rail and air transport, of water and sewage treatment operations, of electricity generation utilities, of public lands and seabed to the mining and oil sectors, and so on. This is the best of all possible worlds or, more accurately, the best that can be done with a stagnant capitalism.
The metrics of success in the BRIC markets
Extending out from the imperial metropoles, neo-liberal capitalism attempts to refashion the world in its image. While each regional or local formation has its own important specificities, the common feature is the parasitic feeding off the local working class and peasantry. The metric for capital ‘success’ in the ‘emerging markets’ of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) is the extent to which imperialism has reshaped those economies in its interest and distorted the social relationships that preceded its arrival.
In China, 30 years after the counter-revolution, a new big bourgeoisie has emerged along with increasing stratification and oppression. In 2004, the Chinese proletariat manufactured 75% of the world’s toys, 58% of the world’s clothes, and 29% of the world’s mobile telephones. (36) Average per capita income was 2765 yuan (about US$400). World Bank analysts estimate that in 2004, unemployment for those under 60 years old stood at 30%, a figure that equates to hundreds of millions. Using the threshold of $1.50/day, the poverty level among city dwellers in 2004 was 13.5% and among the rural population it was 22.4% (37) Meanwhile, the anarchic expansion of industrial production spews huge amounts of toxic wastes into ground water and the atmosphere. An estimated 98% of the population is continually breathing polluted air and as many as 400,000 die each year as a result. (38)
The ratio of risk to super-profits, and the importance of this equation to imperialism, is further illustrated by the Brazilian economy. On one hand, imperialism lauds Brazil as a key ‘emerging market,’ full of opportunities for exploitation and resources for capital to extract. It is the largest economy in South America, with a GDP of $1.3 trillion (larger than all other South American economies combined) and a recent GDP growth rate of 5.4%. Comparatively, Brazil is highly and diversely industrialized (about 29% of GDP), and has been growing rather than contracting. For instance, the state-owned company Petrobras — which extracts and refines petroleum globally — had 2007 revenues that were one-fifth to one-third of any one of the three major oil monopolies (Exxon, Shell, BP), but its rate of return was twice that of BP and 50% higher than Exxon.
However, Brazil presents capital with various obstacles to the neo-liberal model. The distended economy has by-passed most of the people of Brazil, where official unemployment stands at 9.5% and 31% live below the World Bank’s poverty line (of US$1.25/day). These crushing conditions of life, needless to say, militate against widespread participation as ‘consumers’ in the neo-liberal model. In fact, the global business consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that more than one-half of the Brazilian work force — and up to 90% in rural areas — are working ‘off the books’ and outside the legal economy. McKinsey estimates that this so-called informal economy accounts for 40% of Brazil’s gross national income! This dysfunction, compelled by the proletariat’s inability to find ‘legal’ work as wage slaves, in turn deprives foreign capital and the Brazilian ruling class their full measure of expropriated surplus. McKinsey & Co. advises that the Brazilian state improve its judicial mechanisms for finding and prosecuting the poor, following the example of Alberto Fujimori’s fascist government of early 1990s Peru. (39)
One of Brazil’s success stories has been its early development of a bio-fuel sector. Unlike the ethanol sector in the US which is based on corn farming and which requires at least as much fossil fuel to produce what it might replace (40), Brazil’s sector is based in sugar cane, with which it has emerged as the leading exporter of ethanol. Similarly, Brazilian soy cultivation has been fed into producing bio-diesel fuel. As in other agricultural sectors, the Brazilian capitalists and their global investors (such as BP and other major oil companies) have expanded arable land at the expense of the Amazonian rainforest and the Cerrado savannah (described by conservation biologists as the most diverse grassland on the planet). (41) Recommendations (from IMF, World Bank, et al) that Brazil’s ruling class expand ethanol production and export that onto the world market are bundled with requirements to turn yet more arable land over to cane growing and the infrastructure to support it. Thousands of square miles of Amazonia are cleared each year for agriculture; nearly 2,300 square miles in the last four months of 2007. (42,43,44,45,46) At the same time, Brazil’s sugarcane workers are paid about US$1.35/hour and as many as 500,000 of them are expected to be thrown out of work as the sector is further mechanized. (47)
India, the “I” in the BRIC acronym, is upheld as another example of a ‘developing’ economy meeting with neo-liberal success as a site for foreign capital investment. There the imprint of its English-speaking colonial past is especially evident in the siting of ‘back-office’, IT and customer service call centers for US and UK banks and other corporations.
In 2008, as many as 1.5 million worked in India’s IT and business-process sector. These services represent one of India’s biggest exports and produce about $40 billion in annual revenue. A software developer with an engineering degree might earn the equivalent of $6,600/year (averaging $2.80/hr for the typical 2,350 hour year). The sector is exempt from labor regulations limiting work-day hours and overtime pay, but even so, salaries are higher than the $5.50/day average income ‘enjoyed’ by the great majority (74%) in an economy with tens of millions of unemployed adults. (48,49)
While the total amount of foreign direct investment in India amounts to ‘just’ 1% of 2007 GDP, those tens of billions of money-capital are joined with billions more and ‘revitalized’ in some of the most hazardous and environmentally dangerous manufacturing processes. The very word Bhopal instantly reminds people around the world of the terrible industrial disaster at a Dow Chemical plant in 1984 which resulted in 22,000 deaths and left tens of thousands more permanently disabled. (Dow shielded its stockholders’ money from litigation by declaring bankruptcy.)
The chemical industry continues to be an active part of the Indian economy, and the conditions that created Bhopal are still evident in cities such as Ankleshwar, site of the largest industrial estate in Asia and an estimated 1700 chemical factories producing dyes, paints, fertilizers and basic chemicals for the global market. These plants discharge an estimated 250 million liters of effluent each day and another 50,000 tons of solid waste annually, often directly into ditches and waterways without treatment. (50) Many of these are local or regional concerns, but alongside are subsidiaries of multinational chemical and pharma companies such as Ciba and Novartis. (51)
Indeed, ‘success’ in Brazil, Russia, India and China means ever-increasing super-profits extracted from super-low wage basic industries such as metals and chemicals, and from local natural resource extraction. This super-exploitation has provided the 8-10%+ annual growth rates much coveted by international finance capital.
But these same economic sectors are no less immune to the present global economic crisis. The metals sectors in both India and China are now being shaken by the precipitous drop-off in world-wide demand as construction projects are deferred or abandoned, truck and auto factories shuttered, and infrastructure projects cancelled. Indian truck sales have fallen off by 50% over a year ago, Tata Steel has cut its planned output by 30% through next March, 150 blast furnaces in China have been closed in recent months, and the two biggest auto concerns in Brazil — Fiat and GM — have reduced projected output and closed down production units. (52,53,54,55) And for the first time in its history, the US Federal Reserve Bank agreed to loan $30 billion to each of the central banks of Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Singapore, in an effort to ‘re-liquify’ those money markets, and keep them tightly joined to the US empire. (56)
Meanwhile, for the masses of people in these emerging markets, life remains hellish. While Western commentators discuss an emerging “iPod India” — alongside an existing “Mother Theresa India” (57) — for the vast majority of people in the ‘emerging’ and the developing world the chief problem of the day is basic survival. Since January of this year, the value of the rupee has fallen 20% against the US dollar and inflation has hovered around 11% all year. (58) As noted above, hundreds of millions of workers are unemployed throughout Brazil, China and India. The schemes promoted by the local ruling elites for further enmeshing their economies in global capitalism bring nothing but more poverty for the masses.
Where does this lead? Consider two last and very recent examples. The Indian state of West Bengal acquired the small plots of 13,000 poor peasants with promises of future employment for them or their children in a proposed Tata Motors factory. The company changed its plans in September and decided not to open the plant after all, leaving 13,000 more peasants landless with no opportunity to reclaim their lost land, which is now devastated by the construction work anyway. (59) Laid-off workers at the Graziano Trasmissioni automobile parts factory near Delhi met with management September 24 to learn the terms of their possible reinstatement. The workers who had been paid the equivalent of $10/week were enraged by the ‘job offer’, which included a pay cut, and chased the factory manager from the factory, where he was beaten to death by an angry crowd. (60,61) Factory owners across India expressed outrage at this ‘lynching’ and began or increased deployment of armed guards at their factories. (62)
Arms and the state
“Here was a society which by all its economic conditions of life had been forced to split itself into freemen and slaves, into the exploiting rich and the exploited poor; a society which not only could never again reconcile these contradictions, but was compelled always to intensify them. Such a society could only exist either in the continuous open fight of these classes against one another, or else under the rule of a third power, which, apparently standing above the warring classes, suppressed their open conflict and allowed the class struggle to be fought out at most in the economic field, in so-called legal form. The gentile constitution was finished. It had been shattered by the division of labor and its result, the cleavage of society into classes. It was replaced by the state.” (Frederick Engels, Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State. Chapter 9: “Barbarism and Civilization.”)
An important illusion of contemporary class society, especially in America, is that the state exists as a third force in society, the neutral arbitrator between exploited and exploiters. The brutal truth is that the state exists to enforce the rule of the exploiting class over all others. It does this through laws, courts, prisons, police and its organized military.
In the age of imperialism, this resort to armed force extends globally. Mid-19th century ‘gunboat diplomacy’ and the threat of force has been steadily replaced with large and complex ‘force projections’ that combine infantry, artillery, long-distance bombers, aircraft carriers and battle cruisers, capable of delivering tremendous destruction upon any rebellious or malfunctioning sector of the empire. This was an important part of the gangster logic behind the US war against Iraq in 1991, and it was reemphasized by war minister Rumsfeld’s vow to deliver ‘shock and awe’ as part of the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.
A sub-narrative within the view of the state as ‘impartial’ or ultra-social is the concept that a ‘military industrial complex’ likewise exists as a supra-social formation, unduly influencing or even directing government and the economy, apart from the ‘regular’ capital formations. The contemporary avatar for this ‘complex’ might be Dick Cheney, who together with Donald Rumsfeld, is often credited with crafting current US military policy and the expeditions in southwest Asia.
It is certainly true that Cheney the imperialist bourgeois is a ruthless and malevolent capitalist. He does personify US imperialism for millions around the world. But it is dangerously mistaken to conclude from his performance that changing the cast means changing the function of the state and its armed forces. The danger of this illusion will soon be demonstrated by the actions of President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, Secretary of Defense Gates (!) and the rest, continuing in southwest Asia and quite possibly expanding from there.
Not ‘good business’ but the drastic measure of an empire
If anything, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and company have demonstrated that war is not just another sector of global business. Remember that Cheney and others not only predicted that the expedition against Iraq would be short and swift but that it would ‘pay for itself’ via the oil fields and refineries that would be seized intact by the invading armies. Five years later, Iraq’s economy is non-existent, its oil production is a minor fraction of even the stunted pre-2003 levels. Iraq is among the top five ‘failed states’ as ranked by the US think-tank Fund for Peace. Far more serious, the social fabric of Iraq has been completely destroyed and replaced by protracted civil war. The CIA Fact Book reports that Iraq’s current GDP is about $60 billion with an unemployment rate of almost 19%. How they have calculated those figures is undisclosed. But for Afghanistan, six years after the installation of the current comprador regime, the data is much worse: a GDP of just $8.3 billion, unemployment of 40% and an official rate of poverty (below the $1.25/day World Bank level) of 53%.
Most capitalists would probably prefer ‘profits without tears,’ but that isn’t a result produced by a system of exploitation and oppression. If now sections of the bourgeoisie have second thoughts about their policy in southwest Asia, they didn’t express any when the die was cast in 2001 or when it was rolled again in 2003. At those points, they were much more concerned about consolidating their position as chief imperialist power, including their domination of the central and southwest Asian oil fields.
It is true that the military (and ergo war) provides a market for various sectors of capital. Specifically in the US, several monopolies — Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are four examples — have ‘defense’ and aerospace production as their core operations. This sector collected revenues of $329.1 billion in 2007 and is expected to grow by 6.3% through 2012. (64) But this sector — accounting for less than 3% of GDP — is not so large as to dominate or direct society, is it?
Of course, not all military spending goes into that ‘defense’ sector. Billions are spent on the wages of soldiers and sailors, and on the operation and maintenance of the more than 700 military bases around the world. Several billion are also expended annually at the Department of Energy, producing, testing and maintaining nuclear warheads for ICBMs, SLBMs and cruise missiles. Including expenditures for the expeditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the non-profit Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation calculates the real military budget for FY 2009 is $711 billion.§
Such an amount certainly impacts the larger economy and society. The fact that the government is spending upwards of $195 billion annually to wage wars against Iraq and Afghanistan has a significant effect on national debt, on the financial bond markets, on international commerce, and so on. That $195 billion is not ‘productive capital’ and the concept of military service as some deranged Works Progress Administration§§ is full of flaws. The National Guard certainly wasn’t coming to the aid of the displaced immediately after Hurricane Katrina, for one recent and glaring example. (It did play its intended role as occupying army, however.)
Throughout most of the 1800s, the principal expenditures of the Federal government were military-related and funded through customs duties, excise taxes and the sale of ‘public’ lands (inhabited by Native Peoples). The 1860-1865 civil war and then advent of an actively imperial mission in the later 1800s required the Federal government to borrow in order to pay for increasing military expenses. The national income tax was implemented to address this imbalance, but was quickly subsumed by the huge deficits incurred during 1917-1919 (US participation in the world war). Since the mid-1930s (the advent of Social Security income) and then again in the mid-1960s (the addition of Medicare and Medicaid), Federal expenditures tilted toward these mandatory social service programs. The Federal government has incurred budget deficits and borrowed to pay its expenses throughout the 20th century until the 1998-2000 period, when a slight surplus was realized. (65) Since 2000, the Federal debt has grown to the current level of 60% GDP.
Within that current level of debt, military spending represents a significant but minority percentage. Outlays for ‘national defense’ in 2004 were 3.9% of GDP. The estimate for 2009 is still ‘just’ 4% GDP. Notably, this rate is several percentage points lower than the spending incurred during the 1950s (ranging from 5.0% to 14.2%) and the 1960s (7.4% to 9.5%), when the US actively confronted the Warsaw Pact bloc, invaded Korea, occupied Vietnam, and was engaged in other ‘counter-insurgency’ wars in Latin American, Southeast Asia and Africa. During Ronald Reagan’s first term and build-up of strategic and nuclear forces (1981-1985) defense outlays rose from 5.2% to 6.1% GDP (282.2 to 356.5 billion in Y2K dollars). (65)
Comparing military spending with total government outlays provides a different perspective. Here we see the burden that a war footing places on the state, and through it, the economy as a whole. Recall that many economists point to the USSR’s military spending burden as a chief cause of its dissolution in 1991. The US was accumulating a similar debt burden, but it was sitting atop a much more parasitic, more extractive empire, which it could ‘collateralize.’
During the height of the war against Vietnam (1965 – 1971) military spending comprised an average of 44% of total government spending, but it declined to 34.3% in 1972 and further to 26% by 1975. During the Carter administration (and anti-colonial upheavals in the Philippines, Nicaragua and Iran), military spending averaged 23.1% of total government outlays. During Reagan’s two terms, war spending as percent of total outlays gradually increased from 23.2% in 1981 to 28.1% in 1987. During Bush senior, the military portion actually declined from 26.5% in 1989 to 21.6% in 1992, and has continued to decline in relation to overall government spending to its current point of about 17%.
Since about 1994, the US government has tried to maintain a ‘steady-state’ military program. This has been criticized by neo-conservatives as a missed opportunity given the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR, but it also reflects the realities of empire. The heightened outlays during the second half of the 1960s placed tremendous pressure on the national economy in the form of increased public debt which found twin expression in price inflation and currency devaluation. This pressure was so significant it prompted the US to abandon a silver and gold backed currency and consequently prompted the collapse of the Bretton Woods arrangement. The renewed build-up during the 1980s in direct and heightened confrontation with the USSR, both in terms of the threat of all-out war and in regard to ‘proxy’ battles around the world, also put great pressure on the US financial system, including more inflationary pressure.
In short, high military spending is not sustainable and is only to be incurred by the empire under special circumstances: when the empire is being gravely threatened, either by other imperialists or by significant revolutionary upsurges in the neo-colonies. War in itself is as risky as geo-politics can get. There is no guarantee who will prevail, the longer it lasts the higher the toll it places on the empire, and even when the outcome has been ‘favorable’ in the past, the economic damage has still required years to repair.
The war they are planning to fight
A further sign of what the planners are planning for is seen in how the state is directing its actions now. As is well known, for example, the US is pressing some of its junior partners in NATO (Poland, the Czech Republic) to site a new Ballistic Missile Defense system on their territories. Few seriously believe the US claim that these weapons are intended to defend Europe from Iran, especially with the US Fifth Fleet sitting in the Persian Gulf and the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. This missile defense program is not confined to the missiles and radars proposed for eastern Europe, it also includes space-based radars, space tracking & surveillance systems, ‘multiple kill vehicles’ and other components first envisioned as part of the ‘strategic defense initiative’ (aka ‘star wars system’) of the 1980s.
Other weapon systems in the 2009 budget include 59 new fighter and 22 new attack aircraft, an undisclosed number of B-2 bombers, an SSN-774 attack submarine, a CVN-21 aircraft carrier, 207 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 24 Trident II D-5 missiles, 6400 more ‘smart bombs’, 750 short-range guided missiles (‘stand off’ systems), 850 unmanned (e.g. Predator, Reaper, Raven) aerial vehicles as well as an assortment of invasion and occupation equipment; troop landing ships, armored personnel carriers, humvees, helicopters, etc. (66)
Tomahawk cruise missiles and B-2 bombers are designed for either nuclear or ‘conventional’ warfare. The sole purpose of the Trident II D-5 missile is to carry MIRV (multiple-warhead) nukes. In addition to the Department of Defense budget, another $56 billion at the Department of Energy is devoted to providing the materials for nuclear weapon and reactor systems.
As has also been widely noted, at $711 billion, the aggregate US war budget far outstrips that of any of its perceived rivals. It is six times the military budget of China, ten times that of Russia, thirteen times that of France, almost nineteen times that of Germany, thirty-one times India’s military budget, ninety-eight times Iran’s military budget, etc. etc. (66) In short, the US war preparations are not planned in reaction to a specific threat, they are intended for preemptive war fighting — the current, explicit war-fighting doctrine of the state — and the strategic maintenance of the empire.
In this light, Wesley Clark’s November 18 opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune is both noteworthy and ominous in emphasizing that “aiding the American automobile industry is not only an economic imperative, but also a national security imperative.” He was not primarily referring to the production of HUMVEEs. (67)
Importantly, however, there is no pre-destined arc that either US imperialism or capital as a world system is following. Each economic crisis and each war contains as much of an opportunity for demise as for any other outcome. In the present period, racked with deepening financial crisis, imperialism will be increasingly challenged to take extreme measures — far more ‘extreme’ than bailing out even the biggest bank or automotive company. Those measures may not be on the table right now, but they are surely in the top desk drawer. (That is, after all, why ‘defense planners’ plan.)
Challenges and Opportunities
The first part of this essay demonstrated how financial derivative trading arose as a method for containing international risk as capital moves out from under the political umbrella of state superstructures. Likewise, the imperialist military functions as an agency to control risk through direct force.
Today, US imperialism is in the twin grips of ever-deepening economic crisis and two expeditionary quagmires that it is not winning but is not yet ready to concede. Both of these problems are seen to be of its own design, results of its rapacious nature as expressed militarily, geo-politically and financially. It is increasingly challenged for its dominant position within the global capital system, both by imperial competitors (France, Russia, Germany) and by those who would like to exert their own regional or wider hegemony (China, India, Brazil, Venezuela). Sarkozy convenes an economic summit without the United States. (68) India’s defense budget is on course to exceed the UK’s by 2013. (69) The US pushes for NATO’s expansion, Germany and Spain push back. (70) Russia sells Venezuela $1 billion in arms and they hold joint naval exercises in the Caribbean. (71) And empire is most importantly challenged by those who would dare to put an end to it altogether: the revolutionary people around the world.
The US is accelerating toward a wall. The closer it gets to impact, the more desperate it will become. At that point, the question will not be whether it can ‘sustain’ war spending of 20, 30 or 40%, but whether it can sustain and grow its empire by throwing the die one more time.
Rather than consider militarism and imperialist war as the project of autonomous actors (e.g. Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan), we should understand it as the further extension of the narrow interests of specific aggregates of capital, as an extension of the political interests of a specific ruling capitalist class and, foremost, of their necessity (and desire) to maintain and expand their empire.
In crisis, risk management becomes a class project; the continuation of politics by other, more violent, means.
notes:
††† Recycling the discards of the imperial metropoles is common practice. For example, 90% of the textile machinery in Thailand is second-hand, and 35% of machinery imports to Morocco are used equipment. The German social research firm Adelphi Research estimates that this older machinery requires 20% more energy to operate than would new equipment. (33)
§ Others have calculated ‘war costs’ as an even larger sum. Chalmers Johnson estimates the 2008 military budget at $1 trillion (“The economic disaster that is military Keynesianism.” Le Monde Diplomatique. February 2008), and Thomas E. Woods, Jr. repeats estimates by Joseph Stiglitz that actual annual war costs are $2 trillion by including ‘the economic impact of lives lost, jobs interrupted and oil prices driven higher’ (“What the warfare state really costs.” LewRockwell.com. 12 September 2007.)
§§ The Works Progress Administration — WPA — was a New Deal program implemented in 1935 to organize infrastructure renewal as well as new construction, such as building post offices and other government buildings.
32. “The last big Latin opportunity.” Euromoney. March 2007.
33. “Guatemala infrastructure insufficiency. Guatemala’s poor infrastructure puts off investors and makes the country less able to fully profit from free-trade deals.” The Banker. 1 March 2007.
34. “US castoffs resuming dirty career. Old plants, buses are sold to poorer nations.” Boston Globe. 19 August 2007.
35. Dal Yong Jin. “Neoliberal restructuring of the global communication system: mergers and acquisitions.” Media, Culture & Society. 30(3). 2008.
36. Levy, B. “The interface between globalization, trade and development.” International Business Review. October 2007.
37. Xubei Luo and Nong Zhu. “Rising Income Inequality in China: A Race to the Top.” Policy Research Working Paper 4700. World Bank. August 2008.
38. “Cleaning up their act for companies that produce and source goods outside the US.” Women’s Wear Daily. 30 October 2007.
39. Capp, J., H-P Elstrodt, W. B. Jones. “Reining in Brazil’s informal economy.” The McKinsey Quarterly. January 2005.
40. “The Great Biofuels Con.” The Sunday Telegraph (London). 13 July 2008.
41. “Are we fueling the destruction of life on Earth?” Sunday Express (UK). 2 March 2008.
42. “Destruction of the Amazon rainforest surges despite outcry from scientists.” The Independent (London). 18 January 2008.
43. “Amazon balancing act: Farm growth vs. forests.” St. Petersburg Times (Florida). 8 December 2007.
44. “Brazil’s experience testifies to the downside of this energy revolution.” The Independent (London). 15 April 2008.
45. “Amazon rainforest faces new threats.” The Advertiser (Australia). 18 December 2007.
46. “BP invests $589m in Brazil’s ethanol industry.” Weekend Australian. 26 April 2008.
47. “Sun sets on Brazil’s sugar-cane cutters: half a million jobs will go in drive for mechanisation.” The Guardian (London). 5 June 2008.
48. Farrell, D., N. Kaka, S. Sturze. “Ensuring India’s offshoring future.” The McKinsey Quarterly. 2005 special edition.
49. Farrel, D. and S. Zainulbhai. “A richer future for India.” The McKinsey Quarterly. 2004 special edition.
50. “World’s Worst Pollution Problems.” Blacksmith Institute, New York. Accessed at http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/projects/regions/south_asia
51. “India grapples with poisonous legacy.” Financial Times (London). 13 November 2008.
52. “India’s truckmakers suspend output.” Financial Times (London). 10 November 2008.
53. “JSW delays $1.4bn plant.” Financial Times (London). 10 November 2008.
54. “Mittal fatigue.” Financial Times (London). 31 October 2008.
55. “Emerging markets’ car sales moving into the slow lane.” Financial Times (London). 10 October 2008.
56. “ECB may follow as Fed, BOJ, India ‘shocked’ into cuts.” Bloomberg News. 1 November 2008.
57. “Mother Theresa India v iPod India.” Financial Times (London). 19 September 2008.
58. “India unexpectedly cut interest rates to spur growth.” Bloomberg News. 1 November 2008.
59. “Indians count cost of pyrrhic victory over Tata.” Financial Times. 6 October 2008.
60. “Workers who killed boss were pushed too hard, says minister.” The Times (London). 25 September 2008.
61. “Fired Indian Workers Kill Boss.” National Public Radio. 25 September 2008.
62. “Sugar industry in western up learns to live by the gun.” Indian Express. 3 October 2008.
63. “Failed State Index.” The Fund for Peace. Accessed at http://www.fundforpeace.org/
64. “Aerospace & Defense in the United States.” Datamonitor Industry Profile. #0072-10002. January 2008.
65. Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2006. US Government Printing Office. Washington, DC.
66. Hellman, C. and T. Sharp. “Fiscal Year 2009 Pentagon Spending Request Briefing Book.” Washington, DC. Center for Arms-Control and Non-Proliferation.
67. Clark, W. “What’s good for GM is good for defense.” International Herald Tribune. 18 November 2008.
68. “Sarkozy, Barroso to discuss EU stimulus plan.” Reuters. 20 November 2008.
69. “Indian defence budget to exceed UK’s by 2013.” Sunday Telegraph (London). 14 September 2008.
70. “As U.S. pushes NATO growth, Western ties to Russia hand in balance.” Intenational Herald Tribune. 11 November 2008.
71. “Russia flexes its military muscle in new exercise.” Intenational Herald Tribune. 21 October 2008.
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