Two Cheers for the Nation State

by Frank Lee

The capitalist/imperialist system has dominated the world for at least two and half centuries, and perhaps even longer. This much is known and this much is clear. The system has been volatile and dynamic, transmuting into different forms with changing fundamental structures and institutions as well as different agents. It is patently evident that the imperialism which was the object of analysis of V.I.Lenin, [1] N.Bukharin, [2] R.Luxemburg, [3] as well as J.A.Hobson, [4] and Leonard Woolf, [5] is fundamentally different from the present configuration.
One of the previously salient and defining features of the former imperialism was the multi-level conflict which existed between the rival great powers: Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Spain and Portugal, and latterly the United States. The conflict had been the cause of a number of highly destructive wars. This period of inter-imperialist rivalry pretty much ended in 1945 with the emergence of the USSR, the pre-eminence of the US, and setting up of NATO and the Bretton Woods Agreement on world trade policy and economic development. Attempts by Britain and France to re-establish their pre-WW2 global pretensions were unceremoniously slapped-down by the US during the Suez crisis in 1956.
From this time on western imperialism (including Japan and south Korea) took on different contours. The prime power which stood in the command-centre of the new dispensation was the United States. With the ending of the World War 2 the US took control of Europe through an occupation force, NATO, in which Britain, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Turkey and Greece became vassal states. This subaltern European position was further cemented by the inclusion of these states into the economic institutions set up during the Bretton Woods Conference, namely, the IMF, the International Bank for Development and Reconstruction (IBRD or World Bank) and GATT (now the WTO). There was some resistance to this integrating process from France during the Gaullist period, but this disappeared with the ascendency of Sarkozy, Hollande and now Macron.
This the new imperialism resembled a tiered structure. The hegemon – the US – was the undisputed leader at the top of the pyramid, next came western Europe and Japan and South Korea (both virtual semi-colonies of the US) and then the developing world. The exceptions to this were those states who were then outside of this system: The USSR and its east European satellites as well as China North Korea and in turn Indo-China and Cuba. However, during the post-Berlin Wall period, nearly all Eastern Europe, outside of Russia, has been absorbed into the US unipolar empire, becoming dual members (apart from Ukraine and Georgia) of both the EU and NATO.
The US rules this empire politically, economically, militarily and culturally. This is not a creation of a multi-cultural world, it would be more accurately described as being an increasingly mono-cultural world; the world is to be, and in part already is, Americanised. And like any empire the US demands tribute from its vassals. Apart from military dominance US rule is crucially buttressed by the possession of the world reserve currency – the $.

Moreover in 1973 Henry Kissinger cut a deal with the Saudis (at the time the world’s largest oil exporter and de facto leader of OPEC) to have oil exclusively priced in US dollars. This of course pushed up the value of the dollar helping to maintain US financial and economic dominance as countries needed the dollar to pay for their oil. This also meant that foreign goods became cheaper to US consumers and the strong dollar also kept inflation under control – a sweet deal. The pre-eminence of the overvalued US currency has amounted to what became an almost permanent subsidy by the rest of the world to the United States.

Thus, the destruction of both Libya and Iraq become explicable. Gaddafi wanted to exit from the US dollar having intended to introduce a new gold backed currency for Africa, the dinar. For his part, Saddam Hussein had wanted to invoice Iraq’s oil in euros rather than US$. These policies – which appeared quite reasonable – were in effect a death sentence for both men and the destruction of both their respective nations. The US was not going to tolerate any meddling with its currency which would result in the beginning of the end for the great American free lunch.
What seems to clearly have emerged, therefore, is a collective imperialism under the aegis and leadership of the US. Such national sovereignty that the vassal states enjoy are strictly conditional on US permission and control. But it is rare for the US to actually rein in any uppity vassal since the leaders of the Euro bloc seem only too eager to comply with US occupation and hegemony. These wretched Euro Petainist/Quisling ruling elites serve as the template for a comprador class. The UK has, of course, been the market leader in comprador Atlanticism, but this rather dubious honour is not restricted to the British:

Unquestionably, the United States pursues its national interests and hegemonic project by dragooning other states into a type of imposed (and apparently willing) conscription which means that these states have been basically stripped of their sovereignty. This is particularly the case in the EU. At one time, sovereign European countries could decide whether unilaterally to go or not go to war, defend their borders, print their own currency and trade with whom they pleased – this is now no longer the case. These policies will be decided by the US via Brussels and working through those global institutions already mentioned. Crucially, what needs to be borne in mind is that the US is still a sovereign state whereas its Euro vassal states are not.
This notwithstanding, it is also important to consider that this may not necessarily always be the case. Germany, traditionally an Uber-Atlanticist state, has, in the shape of Frau Merkel, recently made noises about Europe going its own way as a result of Donald Trump’s recent visit to Europe and his maladroit barbs directed at NATO, which he has already described as being ‘obsolete’ which didn’t go down at all well with the European audience. Where this apparent schism will lead is as yet unknown.
Importantly in terms of national sovereignty and the existence of nation states, it has become fashionable in certain circles to pour scorn on the notion of national self-determination; these beliefs being seen as misguided as well as hopelessly passé. Max Keiser for one keeps in insisting in his own inimitable, overstated and parrot-like fashion that: “The Nation State is Dead” X3. But Max should know that demagogy is no substitute for analysis. (Thank goodness for Stacy!)
In what is a highly readable book [6] Takis Fotopoulos argues along similar lines. He postulates that a new stage of imperialism has emerged – I agree though for different reasons – and the that the nation-state system has given way to a New World Order based upon the rule of a systemic globalization enabled by ‘Transnational Elites’(TE) a cosmopolitan stateless ruling class spread across both core and peripheral regions of the world. The rule of capital has, it is argued, become de-centred and replaced by a horizontal system of shared power between what were formerly national elites.

…transnational power is dispersed as a result mainly of the fact of transnational economic power – which in a capitalist market economy system is the dominant for of transnational power – is spread among hundreds of transnational corporations. Therefore, it is meaningless … to talk of economic power in terms of what part of the global output a country produces when the TNCs which take the important decisions and not the host countries, which usually exercise very little, if any, control over them.” Fotopoulos – pp.64/65

It should nonetheless be stated that from the outset that economic development in the 19th and 20th centuries was enabled and promoted by significant, top-down structuring by highly interventionist states; this was the case both in Germany and the US during the late 19th century, and most recently in East Asia. This has not changed, nor is there any evidence that it is likely to. Unquestionably, and hyper-globalist rhetoric notwithstanding, nation states remain the most significant force in shaping the world economy. Moreover, the more powerful states have used globalization as a means of increasing their national power.

‘Hyper-globalization’, ‘Market Fundamentalist’ theses, are predicated on the highly questionable postulates that we live in a borderless world, where states no longer matter, and which has been brought about by combination of revolutionary technologies of transport and communication and the increasing presence and power of Trans National Corporations (TNCs); this it is argued has shifted power out of the nation states into the market. This became the fashionable economic mantra of state-denialism established during the 1980s, particularly in the Anglo-American world, and given voice by its arch-apostles, Reagan and Thatcher; it has since hardened into a type of religious orthodoxy which brooks no examination
Nevertheless, the world turns and the neo-liberal hegemony eventually foundered on the rocks of the 2008 downturn. Perhaps indicative of this existing state-market relationship was the meeting which took place during the height of the crisis between Obama and the Wall Street gurus of high finance. Prior to this meeting it was an article of faith that the government, as Reagan once argued, was not the solution but the problem. Now it could be seen that the reverse was true. Speaking with a candour usually reserved for closed door audiences Obama blithely informed the shakers and movers of Wall Street that he was the only one who stood between these estimable gentlemen and the pitch forks. It was the public money of the state which rescued the reputedly infallible markets. The same was to happen in the UK. In some instances, the bail-outs of Royal Bank of Scotland in the UK and General Motors in the US came quite close to being outright nationalizations. In a capitalist economy, the state not the market is the institution of first and last resort.
It now seems evident that the hyper-globalist project has in fact stalled or is in actual retreat. World government without borders, based upon a mono-culture of consumption, and completely free movement of capital, labour and commodities is beginning to look like the liberal utopianism it always was.
Suffice it to say the New World Order is a vertically integrated structure with US national interests’ paramount and with the necessary occupation and vassalisation of the older imperial states, Britain, France, Germany, and the semi-colonization of the periphery of southern and eastern Europe plus Japan and south Korea. In western Europe, many have come to accept without challenge the primacy of the US over the affairs of their states and give little thought to NATO except as a foundation to their security architecture. They have been raised and socialised into this as being part of the natural order of things. In many instances, it is not only a normal part of the status quo for them, but it is also invisible to them.
This is why the post-cold-war continuation of NATO went mostly unchallenged at the societal level in member states leaving the US to slowly consolidate its influence in each and every member state.
The extent that this strategy has succeeded is evinced by the fact that none of these states have neither an independent foreign and/or economic policy. The US consolidates its power through the post WW2 Institutions, NATO, WTO, IMF, World Bank and its control of the world’s reserve currency. In short, the US is an empire (putatively benign – yeah right!) and is disposed to expand this empire until total global dominance is assured. The main obstacle to this, however, is the continuing rise of the Eurasian bloc of China, Russia the Shanghai Co-operation Organization which stands like a brick wall to America’s hegemonic ambitions. Hence the present geopolitical standoff.
The primary progressive struggle today is for national sovereignty and independence. A goal which the US imperial project will do almost anything to prevent, as has been seen in country after country. In terms of the Anglo-Zionist empire, there will only be one sovereign state; the rest of the world will simply be provinces at various levels of pseudo-sovereignty not in any real sense sovereign nations. Well that’s the plan. But as the great Scottish poet Robbie Burns once wrote:

There’s many a slip, twixt cup and lip.”

In the meantime: Two Cheers for the Nation State.

*The term ‘Exorbitant privilege ‘was first used by the French politician/diplomat Valery Giscard D’Estaing.

NOTES:
[1] Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.
[2] Imperialism and the World Economy
[3] The Accumulation of Capital
[4] Imperialism: A Study
[5] Empire and Commerce in Africa
[6] The New World Order in Action
[7] Gritsch M, The Nation State and Economic Globalization. 2005. Review of International Political Economy 12: 1/25

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