The United States in the World: Making Sense of the Past Forty Years (1981-2023)-Part 1

The United States in the World:  Making Sense of the Past Forty Years (1981-2023)-Part 1

–Kim Scipes

 

NOTE TO READER:  This is a lengthy article, co-published with Z Network, that is broken up into five parts so as not to make it too overwhelming; the sections differ in length; it will be published on five consecutive days.  Each section has its own endnotes and references.  Each URL referenced was checked in late July 2023 and is operational unless otherwise noted. There are extensive endnotes, many with references, but it might better to not read the first time you read each part so that you can focus on the arguments being made in this article; however, the endnotes are worth reading!  (Should you wish to read the entire article, it has been published altogether by Z Network at https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/special-history-series-40-years-of-the-united-states-in-the-world-1981-2023/.)

This is worthy of your attention because, to the best of my knowledge, no one has put these components together in such a coherent way that pulls this period together. I argue that we cannot understand the US’s role in the world without examining all three components (imperialism, globalization, and neo-liberal economics) and their interactions.  Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome!

This series is broken into five sections.

• Part 1:  Introduction, focus on three important components in series:  imperialism, globalization, neo-liberal economics, and delves into understanding imperialism, which goes beyond the Marxist analysis;
• Part 2:  Globalization, distinguishing between top-down and bottom-up globalization;
• Part 3:  Neo-liberal economics, with this part focusing on the impact of neo-liberal economics on US society, which a focus on impact on economic equality;
• Part 4:  Neo-liberal economics, with this part focusing on the impact of these policies on the country as a whole and put into a global context; and
• Part 5:  Conclusion.

 

Kim Scipes, PhD, a former printer, is a long-time trade unionist and labor activist, currently a member of the National Writers Union Local 1982, AFL-CIO.  He is also Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Purdue University Northwest in Westville, Indiana, USA.  He has published four books to date, and over 250 articles—in peer-reviewed, general specialty, and activist journals and newsletters—in the US and in 11 countries around the world.  His work, including his entire book on the KMU Labor Center of the Philippines, can be accessed for free at Publications – Purdue University Northwest (pnw.edu).  He is also a co-founder of LEPAIO (Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO International Operations), whose web site is at https://aflcio-int.education/.

 

 

INTRODUCTION

The United States of America has been the pre-eminent country on Earth for over 40 years.[1]  There are many competing analyses of these developments, different understandings, etc., and with all kinds of various intellectual ramifications from these.  However, along with genuine efforts to accurately understand this period, there is much misinformation, obfuscation, and plain lying about its role in the world and its economic, political, military, and cultural activities in which it engages; part of this is conscious, part of it is not, but it means there is a massive amount of confusion about it, not only among academics and journalists but, more importantly, activists and the general public.

This article seeks to untangle our understanding of the economic, political, and cultural history of the United States over the past 40 or so years so we can consciously discuss where the country should go, and what that means for the American people.[2]

That requires a global perspective, which differs from our traditional national focus. 

While it is necessary, it is not sufficient to limit our attention to the United States and/or the other imperial countries.  We must act from a global perspective, and one which specifically includes the formerly colonized countries.  Yes, this makes things more complicated and more complex–and it forces us to consider things that we may have never considered.  Yet we simply cannot prevail without taking a global perspective; from all I’ve seen and learned over the years, it is essential; it simply cannot be done any other way.

Accordingly, what must always be recognized is that social developments always take place within a particular social context, which affects them, for better or worse.  And again, this social context must take a global perspective.

The social context that must be understood is that since at least the end of World War II in 1945, the elites of the United States have tried to dominate the rest of the world; the US is an imperial country.[3]  This means we cannot understand the US simply as another country, but—at all times—must recognize that this is the heartland of the US Empire.  This has had a dynamic designed to advance the interests of the United States—as determined by the elites of this country—over those of every other country. Through developing what can only be called realistically as “American nationalism”—based on white supremacy—and propagating this through the school system, churches, and other societal institutions (and lying extensively about it in the mass media), the elites have gotten large numbers of Americans to support their imperial adventures.[4] 

One of the interesting things about American social self-deception is that this imperial project of the elites has been said to be the basis of our high standard of living and national well-being; i.e., we need to be imperialist, to dominate other countries, to live so well, although it’s never projected in these terms.

However, since about 1973—and certainly by 1979—the US standard of living has stagnated, if not gotten worse for growing numbers of people; this will be detailed in Part 3 of this overall project.  The “solution,” as put forth by our political and social leaders has been what is called “neo-liberal economics”; yet as shown unequivocally, what has been proclaimed the solution has really only made things much worse.  Neo-liberal economics, against what was “promised,” actually has channeled resources from the national population to the managers of the US Empire instead of benefiting our people.  This has been a disaster for many Americans; social inequality has mushroomed as millions of good paying, mostly unionized jobs have been destroyed; our social services and educational system have been under attack; mass shootings have proliferated and, for the first time in US history, today’s generation will not do as well economically as their parents’.  And things are only going to get worse for increasing numbers of people.

It is time for us to consider a new way of relating among ourselves, to other Americans, as well as to human beings around the world, as well as to the planetary environment.

 

ESSENTIAL CONCEPTS:  IMPERIALISM, GLOBALIZATION, NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMICS

To make sure we are on the same page, there are three essential concepts that must be explained:  “imperialism,” “globalization,” and “neo-liberal economics,” and they are each discussed in this and following parts.  These are terms that do not get discussed in general (imperialism), are bandied about as though we share a common understanding (globalization), or simply are generally undefined but necessary to understand (neo-liberal economics); and they are generally not examined together.  They need to be disentangled and then each developed and shown how they interact, and that is done herein.

There has been considerable debate among analysts about the relationship between imperialism and globalization;[5] in fact, some refer to it as “imperialist globalization.”

That is not the approach that some of us take; perhaps most clear is Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2004, Globalization or Empire?).[6] Globalization has been going on for tens of thousands of years. Sometimes this has taken the form of imperialism—Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, etc.—but other times it has not, like when we discuss cross-border migration. Modern imperialism, however, starts with the “voyages of discovery” by sea-going projects of the Western European countries, roughly around 1500.  In other words, these are separate but overlapping processes; they need to be understood accordingly.

It is to these concepts—imperialism, globalization, and neo-liberal economics—to which I now discuss in turn; I begin by discussing imperialism.

 

UNDERSTANDING IMPERIALISM:  COLONIALISM AND NEO-COLONIALISM[7]

Imperialism is often dismissed as a rhetorical term, but it is used empirically herein to discuss reality on the ground. It basically refers to the idea that different countries do not have equal political-economic power; imperialism refers to the fact that some countries are more powerful than others, and that the stronger use this power to maintain or extend their domination over the weaker when other countries do not voluntarily subjugate themselves to the more powerful country.

One of Marxism’s greatest contributions to political struggle is development of the concept of “imperialism.”  To summarize quickly, based on Lenin’s “Imperialism:  The Highest Stage of Capitalism” (Lenin, 1916, New York:  International Publishers) and considerable subsequent empirical elaboration of the concept, imperialism is a process whereby some countries are able to exploit other, weaker, countries for their raw materials (such as agricultural land and its products, such as timber, fruits, etc.), natural resources (minerals such as gold, silver and copper), and sometimes their human resources (slaves or, more recently, labor migrants), which are accumulated, then gathered, and returned to the “home” imperial country to be used to further develop the imperial country.

At the same time, this is done with little to no consideration by the imperial forces of the harmful impact upon the targeted people.  Obviously, invasion and war have incredibly deleterious and immediate effects on a population, in and of themselves.  Robert McNamara, the former US Secretary of “Defense,” claims that 3.8 million Vietnamese were killed during what the Vietnamese call “The American War,” and Nick Turse (2013, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. New York: Henry Holt) documents another 5.7 million wounded, and the physical, environmental, social, and individual costs (which continue today with continuing cases of unexploded ordinance from the war that ended in 1975, and continued casualties from Agent Orange poisoning).[8]

Another level of impact is due to intervening into other nation’s affairs—using either covert operations by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) or “public” operations by the NED (National Endowment for Democracy)[9]—to enforce US imperial desires.  These almost always cause a great deal of societal disruption at least and often times death, imprisonment, torture, and destruction of people and urban areas, especially should they be successful in overthrowing democratically-elected governments, which the US under Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger did to Chile on September 11, 1973—the first 9/11—50 years ago this year (2023).

There is also the role of political sanctions.  This is where one country—generally the US—imposes limits on what a country can import and export, and this is done through pressure, naval blockade, and other means.  Perhaps the classic case is the case of Iraq—between the first and second US-led invasions (1991-2003)—where US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stated unequivocally when asked by CBS News Correspondent Leslie Stahl, that “We think the price is worth it” that approximately 500,000 (no misprint) Iraqi children below the age of five died as a result of US sanctions (Stahl, 1996, ”CBS Interview with Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State under Bill Clinton.  May 12.”  On-line at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP1OAD9jSaI).  The US has imposed sanctions unilaterally around the world and has had especially deleterious effects on Cuba and Venezuela, in addition to Iraq.

In addition to the violence perpetrated, the impact of exploitation can be understood by understanding the simple theft of these raw materials, natural resources, and people, or it can be recognized through the physical, social, emotional, and environmental impacts of such theft that can continue for generations over centuries, and which can be labeled oppression. 

In other words, to begin to understand imperialism, one must recognize that it is an interactive process between a stronger country and a weaker one, intended to benefit the stronger one at the expense of the weaker one; where the stronger country uses its military, economic, political, diplomatic, and/or cultural resources to impose its rule over the weaker one; and this rule is intended to further the exploitation and oppression of the peoples and the environment of the weaker country so as to maintain domination by the stronger one over time.[10]

These dominating processes, however, go farther:  they are intended to establish control by the dominating country not just over the country and resources as a whole, but over the culture and thus the individual minds of the subjugated country’s citizens, getting the latter to at least accept if not embrace the ideas that the dominating country is so superior that it naturally should control the lives of the people in the subjugated country and that it should continue indefinitely.[11]

However, there are two forms of imperialism:  colonialism and neo-colonialism.  What is the difference?

Colonization is the process of direct physical invasion and occupation of a particular land by a stronger country, regardless of whether the invaded land is organized in a nation-state or territorial form; in contemporary terms, it is when the stronger country puts “boots on the ground.”  It is done to establish colonies of the imperial country in a way that ensures continued economic exploitation and political domination by the imperial country for the benefit of the imperial country; it is done against the will of the common people of such a land, whether local “elites” agree or not.

However, during the period of colonialism, the imperial countries generally have groomed sons—and increasingly, daughters—of the pre-colonial elites to run the country after independence, especially by educating them, whether at “home” or in the imperial country, of the “wonderfulness” of the imperial society.  Key to that is to “convince” these future “leaders” (i.e., elites) that the best way forward for their country is to “voluntarily” accept the exploitive economic relations established during colonialism by the imperial country and maintain them after independence.  In other words, while granting political independence, the colonizer seeks in all cases to maintain the same exploitive economic relations after independence; this is known as neo-colonialism.[12]  It keeps the independent country under the economic, and often political, control of the imperial country, without the obvious military domination.

This is not necessarily all bad for the newly independent country; after all, colonial violence against the citizenry is almost always reduced after independence; and oftentimes, qualitatively.  And people see that people who look like them can run the affairs of the independent country, challenging the ideology of “white supremacy” that had been established during colonialism.  These definitely are gains for all concerned.  Yet the gains are always limited in that they generally do not affect—or, at worse, intensify—the economic relationships established under colonialism; relationships that were designed to benefit the imperial country at the expense of the colonized one.

While Lenin’s and his political descendants’ analysis of imperialism is important, it is also too limited; it is basically confined to economic exploitation.[13]  What is ignored here is that an imperialist country usually seeks to dominate a number of countries, sometimes in the same part of the world, sometimes in other parts, and sometimes in multiple parts at the same time.[14]  And sometimes, the individual imperialist relationships are limited to exploitive economic relationships.

Yet sometimes they are not.  What the Marxist tradition generally ignores are the political relationships, both between the particular imperial and colonized countries, and between the different imperial countries themselves.

Jan Nederveen Pieterse has surpassed Lenin’s thinking.  In his path-breaking Empire and Emancipation:  Power and Liberation on a Global Scale (New York: Praeger, 1989), Nederveen Pieterse accepts Lenin’s economistic analysis but adds a political analysis to the economic.  In other words, Nederveen Pieterse argues that imperialism has both economic and political motivations and, by adding this, it allows us to consider issues of domination and subjugation in nation-state relations, which allows us to consider geo-strategic positions and empires, and their effects on world history.[15]  Further, in some cases, economic motivations are primary whereas in others, political motivations are primary; one cannot assume either motivation is primary, but must be confirmed by empirical analysis.

However, Nederveen Pieterse’s understanding of imperialism extends beyond the nation-state level. In a 2010 article, I elaborated:

A political community usually refers to a nation-state; however, while including nation-states in this category, Nederveen Pieterse’s understanding of imperialism extends beyond the nation-state level.  He recognizes that because of external domination during past history, groups who share common culture, traditions, languages, and political organization (I.e., “political communities”) may have been incorporated within the boundaries of other political communities.  Examples of this include Native American nations having been incorporated into the U.S., the Palestinians into Israel, the Kurds into Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, and certainly this is also true of the indigenous peoples around the world.  Thus, instead of ignoring these peoples or making them irrelevant by confining the understanding of imperialism to only nation-states, Nederveen Pieterse broadens the conception of imperialism to include the domination of one political community over another, and this can exist within the current boundaries of a nation-state: these cross-political community border relationships are based in unequal power relations, with the stronger dominating the weaker (Scipes, 2010b: 468).

 

However, in addition to recognizing that imperialism is not just limited to nation states, Nederveen Pieterse argues that organizations at different levels of the social world can engage in imperialism, and that can aid established empires. Accordingly,

Nederveen Pieterse extends the concept of imperialism “vertically” to include different levels of domination. He not only focuses on dominative relations at the nation-state level, but he includes dominative relations at levels higher and lower than the nation-state level. For example, at the suprastate level (at a higher level than nation-states/political communities), dominative relations can be established, such as between the United Nations (UN) and people of any particular country (such as UN “peacekeeping forces” and Haitian slum dwellers). Likewise, dominative relations can be established at a substate level (at a lower level), such as between a labor organization in the U.S. and labor organizations in other countries. In other words, Nederveen Pieterse not only expands the concept of imperialism on a horizontal axis through broadening it to include domination across political community borders, but he also extends it vertically by including different levels of domination. It is in recognizing that domination can take place at a level below nation-state domination that allows Labor’s across-political-community-borders domination to be included within the concept of imperialism (Scipes, 2010b: 468).

 

Subsequently, and coming from a different perspective, scholars such as Alfred W. McCoy (2009, 2017, 2021) have further developed the understanding of empires.  McCoy (2017), focusing on the decline of the US Empire, argues that the claim of empire is resonating.  After discussing a number of writers from a range of political perspectives, he points out that, “In short, analysts across the political spectrum had come to agree that empire was the most appropriate word to describe America’s current superpower status” (McCoy, 2017: 47).  And further, “Calling a nation that controls nearly half of the planet’s military forces and much of its wealth an ‘empire’ became nothing more than fitting an analytical frame to appropriate facts” (McCoy, 2017: 43).[16]

So, in dominating weaker countries, the stronger ones coalesced their power into empires. 

And empires, over the years, have competed to dominate other empires.

And imperialism, in all of its forms, has been based on violence, whether it is used in any particular situation or not.  Thomas Ferguson (2012, “Preface:  Rethinking the State and “Free Markets” in Neoliberalism” in Ronald W. Cox, ed.: xi-xv) presents a fascinating chart (see his Figure 1) which shows commencement of US use of force or covert intervention abroad between 1798-2001.  It is based on data from the US Congressional Research Service, which had compiled a report, “Instances of US Armed Forces Abroad From 1798,” and from Blum (2014).  What it shows is a persistent but low level number of interventions until about 1947 (when the CIA was created via the National Security Act),[17] and then it jumps up dramatically until about 1975:  “Uses of armed force abroad and covert action rose sharply during the Cold War, before declining suddenly as a rest of the Church Committee hearings…”  He continues:  “The drop in interventions did not persist; instead, it dramatically reversed with the proclamation of the “Reagan Doctrine” (Ferguson, 2012: xi), when it surpassed by a considerable amount the 1947-75 period.

Recognizing this requires us to understand, in trying to account for the global development of capitalism, that capital does not operate within a “neutral” capitalist world, where owners’ or corporate managers’ decisions rule, but rather within a highly organized political world based on empire as developed by particular nation-states (see McCoy, 2021).

Over time—and this can be decades, if not centuries of subjugation—the colonies generally have gotten their political independence from their respective imperial colonizer.[18]  Sometimes, independence has come through armed struggle; i.e., revolutions.  Other times, the benefits to the colonizer have become so limited that the colonizer has granted political independence so as to minimize future costs to the imperial country.  However, again, most of the former colonies gained only their political independence; they remain tied economically to their former colonial master (s).[19]

So, to summarize:

Imperialism is an interactive process between a stronger political community (nation-state, or at supra-national or sub-national levels) and a weaker political community, intended to benefit the stronger one at the expense of the weaker one; where the stronger political community uses its resources (including, as appropriate, military, economic, political, diplomatic, and/or cultural resources) to impose its rule over the weaker one; and this rule is intended to further the exploitation and oppression of the peoples and the environment of the weaker country so as to maintain domination by the stronger one over time.

In our next section, Part 2, we’ll discuss the concept of “globalization.”