The Heart of Empire? Theorising US empire in an era of transnational capitalism

Abstract

Contemporary critical theorising on US Empire tends to diverge in two ways. First, more traditional approaches tend to foreground the national basis of the USA's imperial project and the subsequent ongoing inter-imperial rivalry inherent between rival capitalist states and regions. A second ‘global-capitalist’ approach rejects the notion of US Empire and instead posits the transcendence of a nationally based imperialism in favour of an increasingly transnationally orientated state and global ruling class. I argue that both accounts fail in their singularity to capture the nature and role of the US state within a global political economy. Instead, I argue that the US state has long been both subject to and demonstrative of a dual national and transnational structural logic that seeks to enhance US national interests while reproducing a world order favourable for global capital as a whole. Crucially, the end of the Cold War and the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have exacerbated the tensions between these dual logics; these will potentially affect both the hegemony of American Empire and the future of international relations in profound ways.

Notes

I would like to thank Leo Panitch, Noam Chomsky, Frederick Peters, Eric Herring, Owain Williams and the participating students and staff of the Empire series run at York University, Toronto, for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. This article was written while the author was an Economic and Social Research Council post-doctoral research fellow.

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Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, School of Assassins, New York: Orbis Books, 1997. Today US military force continues to play a central role and the USA officially has 702 overseas military bases in 130 countries (unofficially the USA has many more) while it trains up to ‘100 000 foreign soldiers annually’ with the training taking place in ‘at least 150 institutions within the US and in 180 countries around the world’. See Lora Lumpe, ‘Foreign military training: global reach, global power, and oversight issues’, Foreign Policy In Focus, May 2002, at http://www.fpif.org/papers/miltrain/index.html. See also Chalmers Johnson, The Arithmetic of America's Military Bases Abroad: What Does It All Add Up to?, at http://hnn.us/articles/3097.html.

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Ibid.

William Robinson, ‘Capitalist globalization and the transnationalization of the state’, in Rupert & Smith, Historical Materialism and Globalization, pp 213 – 214.

Ibid, p 215.

Ibid, p 225.

Robinson, ‘Capitalist globalization and the transnationalization of the state’, p 215.

Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism, p 47.

Ibid, p 45.

Ibid, p 131.

Ibid, (emphasis in original).

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Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism, p 140.

For an excellent survey of US policy in the Middle East and the role that oil has played in consolidating US hegemony in the postwar system, see Simon Bromley, American Hegemony and World Oil: The Industry, the State System, and the World Economy, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. For more on Iraq and the aftermath of the US occupation, see Eric Herring & Glen Rangwala, Iraq in Fragments: The Occupation and its Legacy, London: Hurst, 2005.

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Support for America's war on Iraq contributed significantly to the loss of the Spanish election by the right-wing Spanish government of José Maria Aznar and has eroded support for the UK's Prime Minister, Tony Blair. See Katya Adler, ‘Spain's “Old Europe” connection’, bbc, 14 September 2004, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3653902.stm.

See Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo, Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1999 for a good critique of humanitarianism as a pretext for imperial wars.

G John Ikenberry, ‘Liberalism and empire: logics of order in the American unipolar age’, Review of International Studies, 30 (4), 2004, p 629.

Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, New York: Owl Books, 2004.

See Doug Stokes, America's Other War: Terrorizing Colombia, London: Zed Books, 2004 for an analysis of US counter-insurgency warfare in Colombia and its link to the preservation of market ‘stability’ and crucial South American oil supplies.