Israel: The Last Colonial State

Exeter historian Ilan Pappe draws on Gabi Piterberg's new book, The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel, to analyze the violence in Gaza. In that book Piterberg

explores the ideological origins and historical progression of this righteous fury [Zionism]. Today in Israel, from Left to Right, from Likud to Kadima, from the academia to the media, one can hear this righteous fury of a state that is more busy than any other state in the world in destroying and dispossessing an indigenous population.

And if one does not want to endorse violence as the means of opposing it, there is only one way forward: challenging head-on this righteousness as an evil ideology meant to cover human atrocities. Another name for this ideology is Zionism and an international rebuke for Zionism, not just for particular Israeli policies, is the only way of countering this self-righteousness. We have to try and explain not only to the world, but also to the Israelis themselves, that Zionism is an ideology that endorses ethnic cleansing, occupation and now massive massacres. What is needed now is not just a condemnation of the present massacre but also delegitimization of the ideology that produced that policy and justifies it morally and politically [emphasis added]. Let us hope that significant voices in the world will tell the Jewish state that this ideology and the overall conduct of the state are intolerable and unacceptable and as long as they persist, Israel will be boycotted and subject to sanctions.

Columbia historian Joseph Massad similarly diagnoses the origins of the current violence in the Zionist settler colonial project and the ideology that has legitimized that historical project:

The only constant in Palestinian lives for the last century of Zionist atrocities has been resistance to the Zionist project of erasing them from the face of the earth. While Zionism sought and recruited Arab and Palestinian collaborators since its inception in the hope of crushing Palestinian resistance, neither Israel nor any of its collaborators has been able to stop it. The lesson that Zionism has refused to learn, and still refuses to learn, is that the Palestinian yearning for freedom from the Zionist yoke cannot be extinguished no matter how barbaric Israel's crimes become. The Gaza Ghetto Uprising will mark both the latest chapter in Palestinian resistance to colonialism and the latest Israeli colonial brutality in a region whose peoples will never accept the legitimacy of a racist European colonial settlement in their midst.

Saree Makdasi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA and the author of Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation explains what the

slaughter of innocents in Gaza is fundamentally about: the people being killed today are the ones for whom there is no room in the Zionist vision of the state. They are regarded as an excess population... This inhuman madness will end only with the end of the violent ideology that spawned it—when those who are committed to the project of creating and maintaining a religiously and ethnically exclusivist state in what has always been a culturally and religiously heterogeneous land finally relent and accept the inevitable: that they have failed.

Obama and the "Graveyard of Empires"

Historian Gary Leupp on pentagon plans to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan:

this will increase the total number of foreign troops in Afghanistan to 93,000, which is just shy of the 100,000 that the Soviets had in Afghanistan at their peak in 1987. He points out that the Soviets had the advantage of supply lines from the immediately neighboring USSR, and including numerous ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks who could speak local languages and had some understanding of local culture, could not repress the rag-tag CIA-supplied guerrillas and secure control of the country... Does Obama, often described as lacking knowledge of foreign affairs, and praised (by all the wrong people) for reaching out to (all the wrong) “experienced” foreign policy wonks, really believe that he can succeed in Afghanistan where so many others have failed?

And he points to the real objective behind the troop increase:

Most importantly, it can finally get that oil pipeline done---the one that’s to run from the Caspian Sea through Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to the Indian Ocean bypassing Russia and unfriendly Iran. The deal was signed in December 2002 but construction has been stymied by the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. That pipeline is, I believe, the big prize.

The war on Iraq has been in my opinion less “a war for oil” actually promoted by Big Oil than a war engineered by neoconservative ideologues to reconfigure Southwest Asia for longterm U.S. and Israeli geopolitical advantage. But it’s in fact been disastrous for the interests of U.S. imperialism, and bitterly divided the ruling class. It’s produced the highly unusual situation where one faction of that class has bet its money on an African-American named Barack Hussein Osama (accused of “socialism” by his right wing critics) to rectify the situation. While I don’t expect a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq under what will in fact be a center-right administration, the focus will be on the competition for control over Central Asian oil and gas. That means a degree of control over Afghanistan that has eluded Washington since the invasion of 2001.

The Power of "No Comment"

When Obama visited Middle East in July these were his sentiments:

"He said then that when bombs are raining down on your citizens, there is an urge to respond and act to try to put an end to that. That's what he said then. I think that's what he believes." [Axelrod quoted on Face the Nation].

Which side of the line do you suppose he was standing on? Does one suppose that Obama might have venture into Occupied Gaza to witness first hand the human suffering caused by Israeli cruelty and American supplied war planes? No, he was not referring to a Palestinian "urge to respond" to Israeli bombs, though one would assume that Palestinians, as humans, would have such an "urge."

Radical journalist Joshua Frank reprints Axelrod's comments:

On Sunday’s Face the Nation, Obama’s Senior Adviser David Axelrod explained to guest cost Chip Reid how an Obama administration would handle the situation, even if it turns for the worst.

“Well, certainly, the president-elect recognizes the special relationship between United States and Israel. It’s an important bond, an important relationship. He’s going to honor it ... And obviously, this situation has become even more complicated in the last couple of days and weeks. As Hamas began its shelling, Israel responded. But it’s something that he’s committed to."

Such feckless adherence to orthodox thinking, and such cold indifference to a human tragedy of this magnitude gives lie to the notion that once Obama's actually in power, he'll be able to put some distance between himself and his AIPAC puppetmasters- even Obama suggested something of the sort when he told 'Ali Abunimah in 200o:

"Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front."

Is Obama victim of his own naivete? Or did he simply pay lip service to Arab-Americans when it was in his political interest to do so (I of course think it is the latter). Did he actually think that once he got closer to the levers of power he'd have more freedom of action? Perhaps he should dust off Ferguson's The Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems. A little more attention to how power in America actually works would have disabused the young state senator of such naive assumptions. Had he read that book he might have a better understanding of just how long it would take to repay all those who put him in power- I don't like predictions, but if i had to venture, i predict that he'll be prostrating himself before his AIPAC puppetmasters for as long as the corrupt and defunct political system for which he serves as chief executive remains in tact.

The problem is strucutual, it's systemic. Obama is now part of the death machine - and has to be opposed as such. The wicked system over which he presides is doomed. Too bad Obama didn't the memo.

Juan Cole puts the Israeli massacre in perspective:

Since the Second Intifada broke out in 2000, Israelis have killed nearly 5000 Palestinians, nearly a thousand of them minors. Since fall of 2007, Israel has kept the 1.5 million Gazans under a blockade, interdicting food, fuel and medical supplies to one degree or another. Wreaking collective punishment on civilian populations such as hospital patients denied needed electricity is a crime of war.

The Israelis on Saturday killed 5% of all the Palestinians they have killed since the beginning of 2001! 230 people were slaughtered in a day, over 70 of them innocent civilians. In contrast, from the ceasefire Hamas announced in June, 2008 until Saturday, no Israelis had been killed by Hamas. The infliction of this sort of death toll is known in the law of war as a disproportionate response, and it is a war crime.

“I inhaled frequently, that was the point.”

--Barack Obama, November 2006

(article here)

The Heart of Darkness

Chris Hedges offers a penetrating review of Joseph Conrad:

Conrad saw cruelty as an integral part of human nature. This cruelty arrives, however, in different forms. Stable, industrialized societies, awash in wealth and privilege, can construct internal systems that mask this cruelty, although it is nakedly displayed in their imperial outposts.

Those who believe that history is a progressive march toward human perfectibility, and that they have the moral right to force this progress on others, no longer know what it is to be human. In the name of the noblest virtues they sink to the depths of criminality and moral depravity... The great institutions of European imperial powers and noble ideals of European enlightenment, as Conrad saw in the Congo, were covers for rapacious greed, exploitation and barbarity.

Obama and the War of Position

Brown University Africana scholar C.D.B. Walker draws insights from Gramsci to analyze the current situation:

The broad left often fails to realize that civil society is, as Gramsci reminds us, a “dialectical unity” with political society. That is, political actors and organizations in civil society do not operate absolutely outside of the social, economic, and ideological dictates of political society [eg The Audubon Society's support for Vilsack]. Is there any reason why over the last three decades we have witnessed the delegitimation of the state as well as state initiatives by those forces on the left in concert with the rise of the conservative assault on a nominal American welfare state? [I think he means that within Civil Society the idea of "shrinking the size of government" has enjoyed as much hegemony as within the hallowed halls of the Club For Growth, AEI, Heritage, CATO, etc]

He calls for the decolonization of American political society, and adds:

"a people’s agenda for change catalyzed by the politics of freedom recognizes that US domestic policy cannot undergo a revolutionary transformation without an end to the policies and practices of American empire abroad. Such a political transvaluation is not effected by renewed calls for “American leadership” – a convenient euphemism for the continuation of American dominance – but by a new vision of an interrelated world community that prioritizes the lives of people over power based on the principle of cooperation and not competition.

Tufts historian Gary Leupp skips Gramsci and goes directly to Marx to analyze the situation:

A lot of liberal Democrats---people who believe in the system (although maybe less so day by day, since it isn’t being very good to them)---are echoing the complaint from David Corn of Mother Jones: “This Wasn’t Quite the Change We Pictured.” Perhaps they feel, to put it in Marxian terms, that he exploited their labor power during the election campaign, and now for all their efforts on his behalf he’s slapping them in the face.

maybe what we’re seeing is a war within Obama’s own mindset. Not a war, mind you, about whether or not to champion U.S. imperialism; if he had doubts about that he wouldn’t be a U.S. politician, or at least a highly successful one attracting the money and endorsements that he has. He is plainly a creature of U.S. capitalism and seeks to enhance its geopolitical advantages; that is a big part of his job description.

I think Leupp has tapped something very important below. One of the hallmarks of Empire is its ability to recognize, recruit and retain talent from throughout its diverse realms (that is scribes, artists, architects, etc. of all races and creeds). But what characterizes all would-be Project Managers for Empire drawn from marginal social groups is their deep seated desire to for acceptance from the existing power structure. He elaborates:

Obama’s staff and cabinet picks suggest a deep desire for acceptance by the existing power structure. It’s as though he’s bending over backwards to disabuse anyone of those nasty campaign rumors that he’s a cypto-Muslim, Arabophiliac, quasi-socialist or closet Marxist. It’s as though he’s actively soliciting the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from Joe Lieberman, Karl Rove, Henry Kissinger, Lindsay Graham, Michael Goldfarb, Richard Perle and the other extreme reactionaries expressing their delight at his cabinet choices, and viewing such support as recognition of his own special gift as a healer and uniter. But how can he possibly expect to unite his antiwar base with his rightwing foreign policy team?

The question now becomes: which villages will be pummeled by American bombs in the name of "credibility" and "national unity."

Should a Car Company be an Instrument and Guarantor of Social Welfare?

Steve Fraser, a visiting professor at New York University and the author of Wall Street: America's Dream Palace is unimpressed with Obama's council of advisers. He contrasts them with FDR's cabinet and can't find a Frances Perkins for the 21st Century. Fraser is critical of the timidity that characterizes Obama's political style and suggests that we should be thinking seriously about socializing the world economy- Henry Ford's idea of making an auto-company responsible for social welfare seems to have been a tragic mistake (I'm personally not all that enamoured with the idea of robbing Peter to pay Paul (the Big 3) so that Paul can continue producing crap that nobody wants or needs. What we have here is a crisis of over-accumulation par excellence. The answer is not increased consumption- its cold hard deflation. The problem is not (contra the advice of corporatists posing as neo-Keynesians) that there are not a enough car buyers, the problem is that there are simply too many cars. The answer is not propping up the corrupt pillars of Corporate America- how to get out of a recession? TAX THE RICH. Those who got rich pumping all that hot air into the economy should now be "asked" (the gun to the head is just a sweetener) to bailout the workers and the environment that they've gotten rich off degrading.

A ray of light? The LA Times suggests that perhaps Fraser spoke too soon, and that Rep Hilda Solis may be that 21st Century Perkins. If the LAT are to be trusted Obama may have appointed his first Cabinet Secretary that could be considered a friend to Labor and the Environment (I don't think that a CommSec that made his name by selling NAFTA to House Dems should be considered a friend of Labor or the Environment - regardless of how much election year pandering he might have done in 2008). The question now becomes what role will Solis and her bureaucracy play within the Matrix of the Master Bureaucracy?

The Resiliency of Empire

Sooner or later vague platitudes about "ending" the "war" will have to give way to concrete policy. What exactly does the Hedger in Chief have in mind for Iraq policy?

Patrick Cockburn on the recent SOFA with Iraq:

On November 27 the Iraqi parliament voted by a large majority in favor of a security agreement with the US under which the 150,000 American troops in Iraq will withdraw from cities, towns and villages by June 30, 2009 and from all of Iraq by December 31, 2011...

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), signed after eight months of rancorous negotiations, is categorical and unconditional. America’s bid to act as the world’s only super-power and to establish quasi-colonial control of Iraq, an attempt which began with the invasion of 2003, has ended in failure.

Gareth Porter reports on the Obama administration's effort to defy the expressed will of the Iraqi people:

U.S. military leaders and Pentagon officials have made it clear through public statements and deliberately leaked stories in recent weeks that they plan to violate a central provision of the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement requiring the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities by mid-2009 by reclassifying combat troops as support troops... Obama's decision to keep Gates, who was known to be opposed to Obama's withdrawal timetable, as defense secretary confirmed the belief of the Pentagon leadership that Obama would not resist the military effort to push back against his Iraq withdrawal plan.

According to SecDef Gates, there is bipartisan congressional support for "a long-term residual presence" of as many as 40,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and such a presence for "decades" has been the standard practice following "major U.S. military operations" since the beginning of the Cold War.

Will think for Money.

The basic concerns of critical pedagogy include:

*all education is inherently political and all pedagogy must be aware of this condition
* a social and educational vision of justice and equality should ground all education
* issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and physical ability are all important domains of oppression and critical anti-hegemonic action.
* the alleviation of oppression and human suffering is a key dimension of educational purpose
* schools must not hurt students--good schools don't blame students for their failures or strip students of the knowledges they bring to the classroom
* all positions including critical pedagogy itself must be problematized and questioned
* the professionalism of teachers must be respected and part of the role of any educator involves becoming a scholar and a researcher
* education must both promote emancipatory change and the cultivation of the intellect--these goals should never be in conflict, they should be synergistic
* the politics of knowledge and issues of epistemology are central to understanding the way power operates in educational institutions to perpetuate privilege and to subjugate the marginalized--"validated" scientific knowledge can often be used as a basis of oppression as it is produced without an appreciation of how dominant power and culture shape it.
* education often reflects the interests and needs of new modes of colonialism and empire. Such dynamics must be exposed, understood, and acted upon as part of critical transformative praxis.

I suppose if none of that works we could simple privatize education and let the market decide. I hear that after Madoff made off with all that money he's looking for a new line of work (after Kashkari is done carrying all that cash to his bankster freinds perhaps he could helpout as well). As EdSec/ basketball hero Duncan says: "I don't run 600 schools, I manage a portfolio of 600 education stocks." That is a brilliant apprach- when all else fails appeal to the infallible logic of the market.

A Long Strange Trip...

What a long strange trip its been: From Reverend Jeremiah Wright to Mega-Pastor Rick Warren...
the road to power winds through some rather strange allies... Yes, "we worship and awesome God in the blue states too"- and where better to worship His Awesomeness than good 'ol Saddleback Church in Orange County, CA.

Is our children learning?

Despite all expectations to the contrary Obama did not ultimately nominate education professor Bill Ayers as Secretary of Education. He chose instead to nominate fellow member of the Chicago Machine Arne Duncan.

Henry Giroux, a leading proponent of "critical pedagogy" is unimpressed with the selection.

Giroux's recent The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex (2007):

The Mysterious General Jones

Who is General Jones? Why is there so little reporting on this figure? Why did Chevron and Boeing want him on their Boards of Directors? Why did the Chamber of Commerce want him as CEO and President of its Institute for 21st Century Energy? Why does Obama want him as his "National Security Advisor"?

In a similar vein, who called upon W. to let him know that Rummy had become a major liability to the Empire's image and that it was time to bring in a "grown-up" to head the Pentagon. Obviously, on a metaphoric level it was Daddy Bush. But how exactly was that decision made and by whom? I suspect that it was the same network that "reached out" to Obama to let him know that it might be a good idea to keep Gates on for the long-haul. I think this is where we'll find the Shadow State -- the Deep State. This is where we find the structural continuities animating US policy. We have a ruling class that dominates the state apparatus, and controls its bureaucratic inner-workings. The 30%-40% of Americans who participate in America's periodic elec-shams choose from among candidates selected by the ruling class.

There is a pernicious myth that surrounds the "power of the presidency." The presidency has increasingly become an object of veneration in our postmoderrn celebrity culture. Obama feeds, and feeds on, this myth when he declares: "Understand where the vision for change comes from, first and foremost, it comes from me. That's my job, to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure, then, that my team is implementing."

President's, particularly attractive ones, help sell copies of People Magazine, but they also operate within severely constrained institutional confines. We don't have an "imperial presidency" in practice. Only in symbol. The All Powerful Presidency is a useful myth for the shadow network of forces that actually controls the bureaucracy. We have Government by (anonymous, unelected) Committee hiding behind a figurehead.

















Amy Goodman on why having a Chevron Exec serving as "National Security Adviser" is not a good idea; and Steve Weissman on the dangers of Jones' brand of "Kool-Aid."

The Wages of Naivete

In Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) Michel-Rolph Trouillot observes: "Naivete is often an excuse for those who exercise power. For those upon whom that power is exercised, naivete is always a mistake." (xix)

I wonder which is the NYT: pretending not to know to avoid culpability (a kind of limited liability journalism) or victim of its own want for knowledge.

Which ever the case, NYT op-ed columnist Roger Cohen thinks that Madame Secretary should take Ehud Olmert's advice and show a little "tough-love" for Israel when it undermines any prospect of a peace-process. Why a US SecSt should take advice from a corrupt, and discredited former Likudnik (besides tradition) is beside the point. The fact is that when Olmert pleads:

We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all, of the territories. Some percentage of these territories would remain in our hands, but we must give the Palestinians the same percentage elsewhere — without this, there will be no peace.

he only demonstrates his own irrelevance- and the NYT commits criminal naivete by suggesting that Hillary would entertain such drivel for even one moment. The NYT should know by now that Hillary demonstrated her "National Security" and "Foreign Policy" credentials when she entered the race for NY Senate the same way virtually all politicians have since Vietnam: by inserting Israel as a counter-metaphor to American weakness and decline (See McAllister, Epic Encounters, "the good fight"). (This is AKA prostrating oneself before AIPAC.) And so Hillary will again seek to demonstrate her - and America's - "credibility" (you know that wonderful thing that brought us Vietnam...) by standing with Netanyahu and "our great Israeli ally" in the Global War on Terrorism.

American Empire is doomed. How many scarce resources will the new adminstration exhaust trying to put humpty-dumpty back together again? Early indications are: way too many.

Naivete is a luxury that we can't afford/ crime we can't excuse at this point.

The Great Identity Politics Swindle

Former UCSC Prof Paul Ortiz describes Obama's victory as a culmination of a multi-generational struggle. Obama, in his words, stands "on the shoulders of giants." It might be more accruate to say that Obama stands in the footprints of Leviathan.

The Military-Intellecutal Complex

More "change" from the Master Swindler (AKA the Swindler in Chief):

One example of the increasingly intensified and expansive symbiosis between the military-industrial complex and academia was on full display when Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, announced the creation of what he calls a new "Minerva Consortium," ironically named after the goddess of wisdom, whose purpose is to fund various universities to "carry out social-sciences research relevant to national security."(1) Gates's desire to turn universities into militarized knowledge factories producing knowledge, research and personnel in the interest of the Homeland (In)Security State should be of special concern for intellectuals, artists, academics and others who believe that the university should oppose such interests and alignments.
...
Militarization suggests more than simply a militaristic ideal - with its celebration of war as the truest measure of the health of the nation and the soldier-warrior as the most noble expression of the merging of masculinity and unquestioning patriotism - but an intensification and expansion of the underlying values, practices, ideologies, social relations and cultural representations associated with military culture. What appears new about the amplified militarization of the post-9/11 world is that it has become normalized, serving as a powerful educational force that shapes our lives, memories and daily experiences. As an educational force, military power produces identities, goods, institutions, knowledge, modes of communication and affective investments - in short, it now bears down on all aspects of social life and the social order.

This is how ruling class hegemony is reproduced. This is how the working and middle classes come to internalize the values and interests of society's dominant groups. Perhaps the subaltern, or under-classes are our only hope. Perhaps all the bourgeois theorist of revolution got it all wrong: universities do not constitute an infrastructure of dissent, or sites of revolutionary ferment. Perhaps they are just one more hoop in the great American game know as "gettin mine before you get yours"... Perhaps it is only the 2/3 of Americans who have not experienced that great mind-fuck known as a college education who can effectively distinguish their ass form their elbow.

But alas Henry A. Giroux holds out hope for the revolutionary ideal, and still believes that the university can be reclaimed from the Wall Street and Pentagon swine who currently hold the levers of power (did i mention Condi is coming back to the farm...):

While registering the shift in power toward the large-scale pr oduction of death, disposability and exclusion, a new understanding of the meaning and purpose of higher education must also point to notions of agency, power and responsibility that operate in the service of life, democratic struggles and the expansion of human rights.

Finally, if higher education is to come to grips with the multilayered pathologies produced by militarization, it will have to rethink not merely the space of the university as a democratic public sphere, but also the global space in which intellectuals, educators, students, artists, labor unions and other social actors and movements can form transnational alliances to oppose the death-dealing ideology of militarization and its effects on the world - including violence, pollution, massive poverty, racism, the arms trade, growth of privatized armies, civil conflict, child slavery and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the Bush regime comes to an end, it is time for educators and students to take a stand and develop global organizations that can be mobilized in the effort to supplant a culture of war with a culture of peace, whose elemental principles must be grounded in relations of economic, political, cultural and social democracy and the desire to sustain human life.

About the author:

Henry A. Giroux holds the Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada. His most recent books include: "Take Back Higher Education" (co-authored with Susan Searls Giroux, 2006), "The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex" (2007), and "Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed" (2008).

More from Prof Giroux on the "crisis of actually existing democracy."

Robert Gates? How is this "Change"?

How exactly does keeping the executor of the "surge" amount to "change." Even Rumsfeld by the time he was shit-canned had come to accept the idea that the "wise men" of the Iraq Study Group were right and the the US would have to start drawing down its force levels in Iraq (see Gardner, "Mr. Rumsfeld's War" in Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How not to learn from the past (ed) Gardner and Young).

It is now abundantly clear that "change" was merely a vacuous slogan which the Power Elite used to engineer continuity. Obama is a pawn of the vested interests.

What could be better than a "Green Deal"?

Mike Davis calls for economic triage. Before any light-rail for mid-to-upper class commuters, Davis calls for investments in health and education. These sectors are more labor intensive and will deliver more bang where it is is needed most.
Davis offers a warning: beware of the "green bubble" and eco-profiteers. The problem is capitalism.

The State of Exception Continues

Obama will employ the same tactics in pursuit of the same ends. Democracy Now! on (and here) Obama's "intelligence" advisers.

Looting the Treasury on the Way out the door

Electoral politics in the US are a spectator sport. They keep us safely anesthetized. Elections are the opiate of the masses.

Naomi Klein on the thieves in high-places and the futility of the electoral process:

Unfortunately for the market, voters have just voted for change. They voted for a candidate who really turned the election into a referendum on this economic policy of rampant deregulation. So you’ve really got a problem here. How do you reconcile the market’s desire for status quo with the voters’ demand for real change? There is no way to do that without a few bumps along the way. And I’m quite concerned that what we’re seeing from Obama’s team is an accepting of this logic that they need to give the market what it wants, which is continuity, smooth transition, which is really just code for more of the same. And when you hear names like Larry Summers being bandied about for Treasury Secretary, that’s feeding the market exactly what it wants, which is more of the same.

Barack Obama turned his election campaign into a referendum on the mania for deregulation and free trade and really less trickle-down economics. He said the idea of giving more and more to the people at the top and waiting for it to trickle down to the people below, and that really resonated with voters, and they elected him on that platform. And let’s remember, Amy, because this really is about democracy, that his campaign turned around when the economic crisis really hit Wall Street. He was losing ground to McCain when the crisis hit Wall Street, and Obama started using this language of really putting the ideology of deregulation on trial. That’s when his numbers turned around. That’s when he went on his winning streak that took him all the way to Election Day.

Yeah, this bailout is really not a bailout at all; it’s a parting gift to the people that the Bush—that George Bush once referred to jokingly as “my base.” You know, in one of my columns recently, I likened it to what European colonial rulers used to do when they finally realized they had to hand over power; they would loot the treasury on the way out the door.

You know, I always think about what the International Monetary Fund does when developing countries come and ask for a loan. Think about what they’re doing right now. The International Monetary Fund says, “You want a loan? Well, here’s our list of conditions.” They used to call it structural adjustment. The same thing could be done to the auto industry. If they’re coming for a bailout, they should be structurally adjusted, and taxpayers should be playing IMF to the auto industry and insisting that they change the way they work, that they build green automobiles, that they protect jobs. It can’t simply be a blank check.

Economists with Guns

A review of: Bradley R. Simpson. Economists with Guns. Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968. Stanford University Press, 2008.

Review Published by H-Diplo on 10 November 2008

Change you can predict?

Talk about government of AIPAC, by AIPAC, and for AIPAC. Wow:

First Joe "I am a Zionist" Biden as Veep, Rahm Israel Emanuel as CoS, Hillary "let's build and Apartheid Wall and invade Iraq" Clinton as SecState, and Joe "let's save Western Civ from Islamo-Fascism" Leiberman as a top "Dem" on the hill... Where will "AIPAC's lawyer" Dennis Ross (the one who wrote Obama's AIPAC speech) end up?

oh but not to worry, Obama's read Team of Rivals... so he has a healthy respect for having diversity of opinions around him: I'm sure a breakthrough in America's relationship with the Mid East is just around the corner.... "change" (you can believe in) is coming. i'm sure Rashid Khalidi, Ali Abunimah, Bob Malley, Bill Quandt, Bill and Kathleen Christi will be given a "seat at the table" and will be able to "balance out" out the AIPAC hawks in the room... yeah, and I've got a mortgage backed security to sell you.... what was it they were were so fond of saying back in the 60s, something about, "we turned a corner," or something about a "light at the end of the tunnel," or "critical turning point" .... something like that. something to the effect of: just be patient, "change" is coming, we're winning, so sit down, shut up and don't ask any questions...

but you know, on second thought, maybe the Dems are right. Bipartisanship IS, after all, a supreme virtue. how else would we have gotten the joys of the Cold War, the GWOT, the Patriot Act, the $700 billion bank heist, ect.... Maybe we shouldn't "look back, we want to look forward," right? yeah that's great logic. why would anyone ever want to look backward? What could you possibly learn by looking backward? Forget about the past. the past is over. It has nothing to do with the present. What good could possibly come from looking back to (say) america's experience with Vietnam? The Phillipines, El Salvador, or countless other places (Alabama, Ukiah, etc...)? What could we possibly learn by looking at those sad and "divisive" experiences in American history? Can't the Republicans and the "Me Too Party" just get along? Why on earth should a "people of plenty" ever become engaged in any kind of social conflict?

The Christisons are not exactly enamoured with this logic.

Bill and Kathleen Christison are ashamed to say that years ago they were both analysts with the CIA. In recent years Bill has written numerous articles on U.S. foreign policies, while Kathleen for over 30 years has written on Middle East Affairs. She is the author of two books on Palestinians and U.S. policy on Palestine-Israel. Bill and Kathleen visit Palestine frequently and are joint authors of a book, forthcoming in mid-2009 from Pluto Press, on the Israeli occupation and its impact on Palestinians, with over 50 of their photographs.

Paul Craig Roberts defends the "Real Economy"

Roberts argues that the crisis has hardly begun and that we better get our priorities in order:

GM’s divisions in Canada and Germany are asking those governments for help. It will be something if Canada and Germany come through for the American automaker and the American government doesn’t.

Conservative talking heads are saying GM is a “failed business model” unworthy of a $25 billion bailout. These are the same talking heads who favored pouring $700 billion into a failed financial model.

The head of the FDIC is trying to get $25 billion--a measly 3.5 percent of the $700 billion for the banksters--with which to refinance the mortgages of 2 million of the banksters’ victims, and Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury Paulson says no. Why aren’t the Democrats all over this, too?

Apparently, the Democrats still think they are the minority party or else their aim is to supplant the Republicans as the party of the rich.

Any bailout has its downsides. But if America loses its auto industry, it will lose the suppliers as well and will cease to have a manufacturing sector. For years no-think economists have been writing off America’s manufacturing jobs, while deluding themselves and the public with propaganda about a New Economy based on finance.

A country that doesn’t make anything doesn’t need a financial sector as there is nothing to finance.

...

Budget deficits from 6 years of pointless wars and from unsustainable levels of military spending have helped to flood the world with dollars and to drive down the dollar’s exchange value. Consumers themselves are drowning in debt and can provide no lift to the economy. Millions of the best jobs have been moved offshore, and research, design, and innovation have followed them.

...

Paulson should rethink the automakers’ and FDIC’s proposals. A bank produces nothing but paper. Automakers produce real things that can be sold. Occupied homes are worth more then empty ones.

Paulson’s inability to see this is the logical outcome of Wall Street thinking that highly values deals made over pieces of paper at the expense of the real economy.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Centre-Right Nation?

http://empirestudies.blogspot.com/2008/10/centre-right-nation.html

Who Rules America?

UCSC Sociologist William Domhoff analyzes Power in America. Some definitions:

For purposes of studying the wealth distribution, economists define wealth in terms of marketable assets, such as real estate, stocks, and bonds, leaving aside consumer durables like cars and household items because they are not as readily converted into cash and are more valuable to their owners for use purposes than they are for resale (Wolff, 2004, p. 4, for a full discussion of these issues). Once the value of all marketable assets is determined, then all debts, such as home mortgages and credit card debts, are subtracted, which yields a person's net worth.

He describes a distinct pyramid shaped class structure in America that has proven fairly stable over time. Historically (since the 1920s) the top one percent of American households have controlled between 30% and 40% of the national wealth (with the exception of a few years in the 1970s when that proportion dropped into and below the 20s).

He describes the class structure as of 2001:

In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers).

On inheritance:

Figures on inheritance tell much the same story. According to a study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, only 1.6% of Americans receive $100,000 or more in inheritance. Another 1.1% receive $50,000 to $100,000. On the other hand, 91.9% receive nothing (Kotlikoff & Gokhale, 2000).

On taxation (no longer on Domhoff's site) Obama is proposing raising income taxes on the top income bracket from 36% to 39%. This is a very modest increase on what is already a historically low level. This graph (http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php) puts it in perspective: 

Historical rates (married couples, filing jointly)

 Table

Tax year	Top marginal tax rate (%)	Top marginal tax rate (%) on earned income, if different<1>	Taxable income over--
1913	7		500,000
1914	7		500,000
1915	7		500,000
1916	15		2,000,000
1917	67		2,000,000
1918	77		1,000,000
1919	73		1,000,000
1920	73		1,000,000
1921	73		1,000,000
1922	58		200,000
1923	43.5		200,000
1924	46		500,000
1925	25		100,000
1926	25		100,000
1927	25		100,000
1928	25		100,000
1929	24		100,000
1930	25		100,000
1931	25		100,000
1932	63		1,000,000
1933	63		1,000,000
1934	63		1,000,000
1935	63		1,000,000
1936	79		5,000,000
1937	79		5,000,000
1938	79		5,000,000
1939	79		5,000,000
1940	81.1		5,000,000
1941	81		5,000,000
1942	88		200,000
1943	88		200,000
1944	94 <2>		200,000
1945	94 <2>		200,000
1946	86.45 <3>		200,000
1947	86.45 <3>		200,000
1948	82.13 <4>		400,000
1949	82.13 <4>		400,000
1950	84.36		400,000
1951	91 <5>		400,000
1952	92 <6>		400,000
1953	92 <6>		400,000
1954	91 <7>		400,000
1955	91 <7>		400,000
1956	91 <7>		400,000
1957	91 <7>		400,000
1958	91 <7>		400,000
1959	91 <7>		400,000
1960	91 <7>		400,000
1961	91 <7>		400,000
1962	91 <7>		400,000
1963	91 <7>		400,000
1964	77		400,000
1965	70		200,000
1966	70		200,000
1967	70		200,000
1968	75.25		200,000
1969	77		200,000
1970	71.75		200,000
1971	70	60	200,000
1972	70	50	200,000
1973	70	50	200,000
1974	70	50	200,000
1975	70	50	200,000
1976	70	50	200,000
1977	70	50	203,200
1978	70	50	203,200
1979	70	50	215,400
1980	70	50	215,400
1981	69.125	50	215,400
1982	50		85,600
1983	50		109,400
1984	50		162,400
1985	50		169,020
1986	50		175,250
1987	38.5		90,000
1988	28 <8>		29,750 <8>
1989	28 <8>		30,950 <8>
1990	28 <8>		32,450 <8>
1991	31		82,150
1992	31		86,500
1993	39.6		89,150
1994	39.6		250,000
1995	39.6		256,500
1996	39.6		263,750
1997	39.6		271,050
1998	39.6		278,450
1999	39.6		283,150
2000	39.6		288,350
2001	39.1		297,350
2002	38.6		307,050
2003	35		311,950

As the graph makes clear rates increased to nearly 80% in the 1910s. In the 1920s, they fell to around 25%. FDR raised them to about 60% to fight the Great Depression, then to over 90% to fight WWII. They remained in the in the 80-90% range until JFK/ LBJ lowered them to about 70%, where they sat until Reagan lowered back to 1920s levels (28%). Bush 41 and Clinton pushed them back up to 40%, and Bush 43 brought them back to 35%.

Sociologist Walden Bello ask key questions of the new administration:

The question isn't whether there is space for innovation, but whether Obama will go farther and make transformative moves in the ownership and control of the economy. Will we simply have a return to old-fashioned Keynesianism or will we finally move decisively toward a social democratic regime that truly subordinates the market to society? That he is said to have surrounded himself with Democratic neoliberals like Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, and Paul Volcker is cause for concern but hardly alarm at this point. Obama knows that the vote was a referendum against neoliberalism, whether of the doctrinal Reagan variety or the more pragmatic Clinton kind.

The end of greivance based politics?

On Election night Reverand Eugene Rivers of the Azusa Christian Community told Chris Matthews that the election of Obama spelled the end of "grievance based (race) politics" in the US.

David Roediger, a Marxist historian at U Illinois and one of the pioneers of "whiteness studies" analyzes the impact of the Obama victory and remains skeptical of the triumphalism of left, right and center, and cautions against appeals to "change everything, so that nothing may change."

By all accounts the election of an African-American president represents an important historical milestone in the US, but Roediger points to the deep structural inequities which affect Black communities and warns:

To think more precisely about the coexistence in the U.S. of such stark and deadly racial inequalities with the historic triumph of an African American presidential candidate requires that we recognize that racism is more than one thing and that we specify what has changed. The view that Obama heralds the end of race-thinking in the U.S. rests on a particular definition of racism, one that currently very much holds sway in U.S. politics and popular culture. Racism turns, on this view, on bad but disappearing individual attitudes, of the sort that can be measured by whether many or few voters act on those attitudes on election day, or even by the ratings among whites of Oprah Winfrey’s television shows or the sales of products Tiger Woods endorses. Deep structural inequalities may be considered unfortunate, but race is personal.
...
My recent How Race Survived U.S. History would add that the tremendous influence of African and Latino popular culture, usually in the most highly marketed forms, leaves race seeming more and more a matter of choice and even taste to white young people who came to prefer Obama and his style.

However, to chart such changes is also to note their limitations. Race is not a matter of choice for poor people of color in the U.S., who are often “illegal” in terms of immigration status or “in the system” of incarceration and its aftermath. Moreover, the politics of style which attracted white voters to Obama would have been greatly strained if his campaign also included straightforward plans to redress racial inequalities. The resonances of freedom movements by people of color inspired the Obama campaign, but those movements are in considerable disarray. The election therefore told us critical but by no means simple things about the present and future of race in the U.S.

Africana scholar Corey D. B. Williams offers a similar analysis:

The historic nature of Senator Obama’s campaign and election has been justly hailed as a signal event in American politics. Indeed, given the peculiar – to put it gently – history and character of Majoritarian Democracy in the United States coupled with the deep symbolic investments in the Office of the President, Senator Obama’s ascendancy to the nation’s highest political office will rightly be the subject of conversation and debate for many years to come.

...

Along with a fundamental challenge and transformation of the formal mechanisms of politics – from a domestic policy that leaves citizens unprotected in the face of mounting economic devastation to an ideologically driven economic policy that privileges the wealthy over the needy to a foreign policy that fundamentally reinforces the dictates of empire to a virtually nonexistent environmental policy in the face of a planetary ecological crisis that threatens all of existence – there must be an equally dramatic reconfiguration of power between the American state and the American people.

Thus, while the nation and world breathes a justified sigh of relief, the searing words of Martin Luther King, Jr. serve as a forceful reminder that the work of a just democratic politics has only just begun: “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”

Sales of Das Kapital soar:

In October Karl-Diez Verlag sold more than 500 copies of Das Kapital, confirming a trend that began early in 2008.

"Until 2004, we sold less than 100 copies of Das Kapital per year," Schuetrumpf said. "In the 10 months of 2008, we have sold more than 2,500 copies. It is clear that people are interested in learning what Marx has to say about why capitalism does not work."

...

A hundred and fifty years ago, the bishop tells IPS, "Marx predicted globalisation, and saw already the failures of capitalism."

Marxist theorists recall that the financial crisis of 1857 in the U.S. inspired Marx to intensify his studies on finance capital and its cycles of boom and bust. Ten years later, he published Das Kapital, in which he described capitalism as anarchic, irrational and blind competition led by the frantic pursuit of profit and accumulation.

To Lead an Empire

Frank J. Menetrez asks Critical questions for Obama:


Will Obama stand up to Wall Street on the regulation of the financial services industry?
Will Obama stand up to the insurance companies and enact meaningful health care reform?
Will Obama stand up to the neocons and remove US troops from Iraq? What long term role does he envision for the US in Iraq?
Will Obama stand up to AIPAC and demand an equitable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Frank J. Menetrez : as a black man, an alleged Muslim, a known associate of former terrorists, and so on, Obama will presumably feel more than the average amount of political pressure to demonstrate unequivocally that he is a good “friend of Israel,” just as Democratic politicians like Bill Clinton have so often supported reactionary “law and order” policies (like Clinton’s so-called Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act) to try to prove they’re not “soft on crime.”

Art work by Allan Burch

Tariq Ali on the symbol and the substance of Obama's victory.

Is there life after the spectacle?

New president-elect, but the bombs continue to rain on Afghan villages, and Wall Street scum continue to grow rich suckling from the public teet.

Franklin "Chuck" Spinney, a former military analyst for the Pentagon who now lives on a sailboat in the Mediterranean, dissects the strategic principles underlying Obama's victory. Obama suceeded in seizing the mantle of Mom and Apple Pie while McCain couldn't figure out if he was a "Maverick" or a "Party Man," a proud "Liberal Republican" in the mold of TR and the Trust Busters, or a proud "Conservative Republican" in the mold of Reagan (come now Mac, give it to me straight, is Govt the problem or the solution??).

Tom Engelhardt reflects on the posts-election let down: What do we do now? (I suppose there is always the Palin 0-12 race to get excited about. Who's up, who's down in that race??) Engelhardt references Tod Gitlins's Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives in discussing efforts to come to terms with life after the "election."

Bacevich predicts that with the election of Obama we have chance to put an end to the Evangelical foreign policy. Let's hope so.

Amy Goodman suggest that Palin may now have a sense of what a "community organizer" does- maybe she could send a note to Rudi.

What will the GOP do? The Party seems to have exploded. The glue holding the neo-cons, free marketeers, and Christian fundamentalists together seems to have grown dry and brittle. This problem first revealed itself in the primary: neocons split between McCain and Rudi, Free Marketeers behind Mit, and and fundamentalist base behind Huckabee. Now that the whole thing seems to be caving in, which way will the party go? More to the center? Will it be more inclusive and moderate (think more "Red Eye," less Brit Hume)? Back to the compassionate conservatism/ kinder, gentler GOP? Or will the party radicalize, and embrace the angry populism of Caribou Barbie and Joe Plummer? My guess is that the system is in a state of flux and that the elements are polarizing. The GOP will tap into that angry populism- as it seems to be the only thing that generates an emotional charge: Grandiose dreams of "democratizing the Middle East" seem frivolous as Americans watch their retirement savings go down the drain; charges of socialism seems to have lost there sting as the "free market" seems to have lost its appeal; but economic hard times, and the visible limits to American power will continue to aggravate conservative middle class anxieties, and christian fundamentalists will feed on this anxiety, look for scapegoats and put their faith in Messianic appeals to God and Country.

What will the Left(s) do? Will they keep quiet out of deference to the new leader as he repays all those who put him in office? Or will they demand that he put some meat on those "change" bones?

I must say that all the talk of Rahmbo and Larry Summers is a pretty disappointing start. On Rahmbo, Angry Arab posts this:

"In Congress, Emanuel has been a consistent and vocal pro-Israel hardliner, sometimes more so than President Bush. In June 2003, for example, he signed a letter criticizing Bush for being insufficiently supportive of Israel. "We were deeply dismayed to hear your criticism of Israel for fighting acts of terror," Emanuel, along with 33 other Democrats wrote to Bush. The letter said that Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian political leaders "was clearly justified as an application of Israel's right to self-defense" ("Pelosi supports Israel's attacks on Hamas group," San Francisco Chronicle, 14 June 2003)." (thanks Eletronic Ali)

There must be someway outta here said the Joker to the Thief

I was first introduced to William Appleman Williams in Ronnie Lipschutz' "The US in the World" class at UCSC. Williams' reputation preceded him. I had a vague sense that The Tragedy of American Diplomacy was the most important book on American foreign policy ever written, but no knowledge of the book's substance. Suffice to say, the book disappointed. I couldn't quite figure out how this book first penned in 1959, with slight revisions in in 1961, and rather substantial additions in 1972. As I read it, it made sense why the book was hardly read in 1959, and almost totally unreviewed. I had recently read Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, and J.P. Sartre's introduction. Along side that tract (penned at roughly the same time), Williams' rather rambling meditations on John Hay's Open Door Notes seemed rather modest and tame. I should have read Empire as a Way of Life. If I am ever in the position to assign reading on American Empire, I will give a short lecture on the social origins of W.A. Williams, and the intellectual history of his famous book. But I will assign Empire as a Way of Life: an impassioned and prophetic essay.

Some highlights (perhaps I'll elaborate more):

Empire is about "the loss of sovereignty... the metropolitan domination of the weaker economy (and its political and social superstructure) to ensure the extraction of economic rewards." (15)

Montesquieu's principle [was] that liberty could exist only in a small state. Madison boldly argued the opposite: that empire was essential to freedom." (45)

TJ flirts with the idea of direct redistribution of property- but ultimately backed off from this proposition- and advocated imperial expansion on the frontier as an alternative to a direct confrontation with the Power of Money. (57)

"an honest imperialist is surely preferable to an apologetic, let alone a disingenuous, imperialist." (84)

As for the War of the States, Williams says: "let the South go. Or, for that matter, let the north leave first." But instead Lincoln "made a deal with the Devil." He could have his empire (of "freedom" of course...) only if he "was willing to destroy the southern culture based on slavery." Unfortunately, Lincoln's quick victory did not materialize. Lincoln rolled the dice with the devil and lost. Lincoln and his men "established a strategic tradition of destroying the opponent's society that caused so much trouble - and horror - America's later wars... It was brilliant military strategy and miserable morality." 87-89

Sen James Doolittle: "the surplus of free land 'will postpone for centuries, if not forever, all serious conflict between capital and labor." 90
But in fairness, "One may doubt that even Karl Marx could have done so [devised a persuasive non-imperial alternative to empire as a way of life]. Indeed, Marx would have probably shrugged his shoulders (and ideology) and said only that socialism is unimaginable, let alone pragmatically possible, until capitalist empire has run its course."97

And so TR, Taft and Wilson devised an image as a "global policeman" to replace the continental empire that had reached its limits. 124

It was Hoover who understood the limits of empire- Hoover understood that Wilson's "New World Order" was a fool errand, and had no interest in confronting every outburst of revolutionary nationalism the world over, but he was outgunned in the face of superior Democratic opposition. 139-142

Instead FDR blamed him for the problems endemic to capitalism- and sought to discredit his philosophy, and once and for all put to bed any notion that there were limits to American power.

FDR's New Deal did not generate peacetime recovery -- let alone a new burst of growth and prosperity. Most Americans realized, privately if not publicly, that the economy was revived only through WWII." (148). His first move was to reverse Hoover's policy of cutting military spending by dramatically expanding US war spending (in 1933!). "In the broader, structural sense, the New Deal created an institutional link between the huge companies and the military." 150. FDR "was simply a charming upper-class disingenuous leader who understood that marketplace capitalism had proved incapable of functioning without being subsidized by the taxpayer. And he could not imagine anything beyond marketplace capitalism." 150. "The point is that, while it was a New Deal, it was not a different game. The imperial outlook had once again become a vision of progress for everyone." 151.

on WWII, FDR had a choice, admit we are an empire and fight like an empire (open a second front in France in 1942) or dissemble and try to trick the Russians into fighting for us. He chose the later. While the Russians lost 20 million people, the US gained 20 million new jobs. Americans had never lived so as as they lived during WWII. Oh, if only the war could be kept going forever... The US lost 405,399 men and inherited a world scarred by colonialism. 167-168

Is this deeply iconoclast interpretation of American history simply Williams' nostalgia for his Great Depression era youth? In many ways the book reads like a call to reenter the Great Depression and figure out a new way out of it. One not predicated on global expansion, and the unholy alliance of State and Corporate power.

Was it me or did Bill Clinton look drunk the other night?

Sirota argues against a Clinton third term

Bacevich on the Global War on Terror:

President Bush will bequeath to his successor the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone. To defense contractors, lobbyists, think-tankers, ambitious military officers, the hosts of Sunday morning talk shows, and the Douglas Feith-like creatures who maneuver to become players in the ultimate power game, the Global War on Terror is a boon, an enterprise redolent with opportunity and promising to extend decades into the future.

Yet, to a considerable extent, that very enterprise has become a fiction, a gimmicky phrase employed to lend an appearance of cohesion to a panoply of activities that, in reality, are contradictory, counterproductive, or at the very least beside the point. In this sense, the global war on terror relates to terrorism precisely as the war on drugs relates to drug abuse and dependence: declaring a state of permanent "war" sustains the pretense of actually dealing with a serious problem, even as policymakers pay lip-service to the problem's actual sources. The war on drugs is a very expensive fraud. So, too, is the Global War on Terror.

Centre-Right Nation?

Thoughts on Louis Hartz and The Liberal Tradition in America (1955):

Jon Thares Davidann critiques one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors (Bruce Cumings, Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century. Duke, 1999)

The second issue which is both a strength and weakness of the book is Cumings' reading of history in parts of the world outside of East Asia. He stretches the book into the literature of both American exceptionalism and world history approaches. His argument is informed substantially by his vast knowledge of East Asian history but unfortunately also informed by a more superficial reading of American and world history.

For instance, his discussion of the possibilities of reading the history of American exceptionalism (Toqueville, Hartz) as the history of the influence of the American middle class suffers from a weak grounding in the literature of American history. American historians have been doing battle over class and exceptionalism for some time, and it is clearer than ever now that Americans have had a class structure, not just a dominant middle class as Cumings suggests.

Even more importantly, American arguments for uniqueness were made possible by that most invisible of Americans, the African slave. Edmund S. Morgan argued in American Slavery American Freedom that a commitment to freedom was animated by the assurance of a captive underclass which would not be permitted under any circumstance to participate in politics. Consequently, while some can argue that the predominance of small landholders allowed Americans to bypass the worst European aspects of class inequality and pursue liberalism to a greater extent, race took the place of class as the most powerful dividing line in American history. Cumings misses all of this and ends up endorsing rather than critiquing the exceptionalist arguments of Toqueville and Hartz. And since the study of American exceptionalism can now be linked to a rapidly growing literature on world-wide nationalism, both American and Japanese arguments for uniqueness can be seen within the framework of modern nationalism, in which arguments for exceptionalism are simply the demand of the modern nation for uniqueness in a world of nations. See Prasenjit Duara's work for the most sophisticated analysis of the complex forms nationalism has taken.

(H-Diplo, July, 1999)

Empire: reflections on one of history's most enduring political structures

My teacher's (Gordon Chang) teacher (Arno J Mayer, emeritus professor of history at Princeton University) warns against any premature obituaries for American empire. In his view we have "Two Parties, One Imperial Mission: The US Empire will Survive Bush." In his analysis the Mid East is the fulcrum of world power - and when it comes to US ME policy he sees only continuity and bi-partisan consensus.

Sooner or late we will have to wrestle honestly with this problem of Empire. One thoughtful effort (though perhaps not completely "honest") in this direction is the eminent historical sociologist Charles Maier's recent book Among Empires: American Ascendancy and its Predecessors (Harvard UP: 2006). Maier seeks to define empire, explain why they emerge, and whether the US constitutes such a formation.

He defines empire:

"Empire is a form of political organization in which the social elements which rule in the dominant state - the 'mother country' or the 'metropole' - creates a network of allied elites in regions abroad who accept subordination in international affairs in return for the security of their position in their own administrative unit (the 'colony' or - in spatial terms, the 'periphery')" (p. 7)

Throughout most of the work he seeks to exorcise the ghost of Marx. When seeking to explain empire he attempts to move beyond economic theories of imperialism- toward a more encompassing theory of the psychic and sentimental advantages of power for its own sake - but he definitely gives Hobson, Hilferding, Lenin and Luxemburg their due.

Most importantly, he asks some very important questions:

“The issue is to discern what long-term implications for international and domestic society and politics arise if we have in fact become an empire. Do we safeguard or subvert our domestic institutions? Do we make world politics more peaceful or more violent? Do we make it more or less likely that the peoples of poorer nations will share in, or be excluded from, economic development and welfare?”

But when it comes to answering these questions, he chooses to punt. He ultimately avoids "claiming that the United States is or is not an empire," as such claims tend to be “polarizing” (again trying to exorcise the ghost of Marx). He ultimately concludes that despite his masterful reflections on the world history of empire- he can not decide whether the bloodshed associated with raising imperial frontiers is justified by the "order and peace" they bring about.

And what he is most concerned about are the domestic implications of empire: the concentration of power in the hands of the imperial presidency- the tendency towards an authoritarian political culture. But when push comes to shove, he suggests that empire may be a necessary alternative to anarchy- and that there is nothing predetermined about the Empire's corrosive affect on Republican values and institutions- America just might be different: America may be exceptional. Despite his claims to agnosticism, these suggestions betray a deeply conservative spirit and his close association with unapologetic imperial booster Niall Ferguson (they co-teach courses in international history at Harvard).

Boston University prof of History and IR Andrew Bacevich has no patience for this kind of waffling. In his review he writes:

Without meaning to be disrespectful, this is not good enough. The United States has pursued its “duckish” or “duck-like” course for many decades now. The arrangements that Professor Maier describes as an empire of consumption have existed at least since the 1970s. There is no need to speculate on how empire might affect American democracy; there is every need to assess how empire has affected and is affecting our democracy – the evidence continues to accumulate before our eyes.

So come on, Professor Maier, give it to us straight.

Speaking of Bacevich, he wrote the introduction to the 2007 reprint of William Appleman Williams' Empire as a Way of Life (1980). I hope to review Williams soon. But for now, Bacevich's autobiographical comments are worth posting:

"I never had the privilege of meeting Williams. When as a graduate student I was introduced to his work, the encounter was a disconcerting one. During that interval between the fall of Saigon and the Iran hostage crisis when I attended graduate school, history departments still reflected the divisions that had occurred during the prior decade. Ideological barricades remained much in evidence and the pressure to choose sides was great. Seeing myself as a conservative (of sorts) [and as an officer in the US Army, I might add], I instinctively aligned myself with the defenders of orthodoxy. From this perspective, Williams, the self-described radical who flirted with Marxism and appeared oblivious to to the crimes of Stalin and Mao, became something of a personal nemesis.

But over time my understanding of politics evolved so too did my appreciation of Williams... [Bacevich began to realize that] At root, empire as a way of life is an exercise in evasion. Americans look abroad to avoid looking within...

Well, it's time to face the music, curb our profligacy, and start paying our bills. Or as [the Angry Prophet] Jeremiah [Bacevich's name for Williams] wrote back in 1980, "Its time to turn in the credit cards and stop passing the buck onto the next generation."

The jig is up. Let Americans heed the prophet's words - or suffer the consequences."

Bacevich wrote these words one year before he lost his son 1st Lt. Andrew John Bacevich (7/8/1979 - 5/13/07) to the Iraq War. So his own personal tragedy cannot explain his intolerance for the brand of Romanticism that leads Maier to write: "the elections [in Iraq] that took place in January and December 2005 suggested that American aspirations had awakened democratic resonances."

This kind of romanticism underwrites murder and mayhem.

Bacevich on the other hand writes with all of the clear-eyed realism of one who carried a rifle for more than twenty years. For him the blood that flows at the edge of empire is anything but Maier's theoretical abstraction.

Hunt on Maier

Maier responds to his critics.