Re: Boles => Grimes on China

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wsn-owner@csf.colorado.edu [mailto:wsn-owner@csf.colorado.edu]On
> Behalf Of Threehegemons@aol.com
> Sent: Saturday, April 14, 2001 8:46 AM
> To: p34d3611@jhu.edu; wsn@csf.colorado.edu
> Subject: Re: Boles => Grimes on China
>
>
> Although its dangerous to expect the past to repeat itself, to the degree
> that the world system is cyclical, we would expect the US to face
> off with
> Europe, not East Asia.  Old hegemons have typically been
> militarilly eclipsed
> by continental powers whose impressive record at political integration is
> matched by an unimpresive record of economic integration.  This
> is the story
> of Spain, France, and Germany.  Presently the European Union is the most
> innovative political actor in the world--yet economically it
> remains a bunch
> of unintegrated nation states lumped together.  New hegemons (which are
> characterized by high levels of economic integration and underdeveloped
> bureaucracies) have not typically fought wars about old hegemons.
> In terms
> of repeating patterns, we would expect the US to increasingly look toward
> East Asia as its economic (later military) savior.  But its not
> necessarilly
> the case that these cycles will mechanically repeat themselves.
>
> Steven Sherman

Unlike the past pattern of British decline, there is no rising nation-state
today analogous to the US.  Which is why there is no one standing in the way
of the US continuing along a mafioso racket path.  So, the patterns of past
alliances are not likely to materialize in this context.  I just don't see a
bipolar Japan-East Asia-US vs. Europe-Russia world in formation.  There is
nothing for core powers to fight over, and I haven't suggested that the US
would face off with all of East Asia.

Because a key systemic structure of capital has been done away with --
territorialism --  and because the US stands with greater relative military
power than ever, it seems quite possible that the ongoing "US vs. 'the rest
of the world'" (excluding a few key allies of course) mafioso racket will
develop further along in the short run.  Direct confrontation among core
powers may not be part of this scenario at all.  However, indirect conflict
may arise as the US strengthens its global protection racket.  In an era of
US decline (but growth of US-based transnationals) which results in moving
US politics further right, US may become more bellicose, and may, if called
upon by Taiwan for support for example, become engaged in a war with a
rising semi-peripheral area like China.  More likely, in my view, is that
the US will engage "rogue" states and create policies that create regional
instabilities that affect capital flows of other core states driving capital
to safe US shores, as happened during the 1980s and 1990s.

On the other hand, the demographic and class changes, along with new
movements, in the US may undermine any shift further to the right in the US,
and this might be helpful to global movements that are pushing an emergent
world-empire toward more democratic institutions.