I'm not sure whether or not the rest of the truncated posting
got to wsn (I saw two, equally truncated, versions), but Dr.R.J.Barendse
forwarded a copy to me. My response below.
>From: barendse <rene.barendse@tip.nl>
>To: "'wsn@csf.colorado.edu'" <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
>Subject: Rest truncated posting
>Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 20:32:21 +-100
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>Right. I have three problems with that:
>
>1.) Contrary to what some WSN'ers are arguing not even during the height of
its power around 1860 Britain was a truely `global bully'. In Europe (always
the main concern of British foreign policy) it was an economic giant but a
military pigmy dwarved by Prussia, France or Russia (and even Austria and
Italy). In Africa Britain had to share some power with France; in Asia with
Russia and later on Japan and in America obviously with the USA - there was
never any question of Britain `bullying' the USA to accept the seccesion of
the Southern states, for example. By 1900 Britain had to share power not
only with the USA but with Japan in Asia, France and Russia in Europe,
Africa and Asia. Even in the financial markets (where, alone, British
supremacy was unchallenged) one of the causes of the rise of the City was
the propensity of French peasants to save - with their investments in South
America, the Ottoman empire or Russia being chanelled through London (and
Paris was always a close rival to London as a source of investment). British
power was never as absolute in the nineteenth century as we now often think
by analogy of the US-supremacy after World War II.
>
>2.)And even during ITS height in the 1950's the US had partly voluntarily
(partly involuntarily) to share some power in the Middle East and (southern)
Africa with Britain, in West Africa with France and in Europe with France
and Germany. If Britain abdicated from world-power that was not in World War
II but only in 1967; remember Harold Wilson saying in 1965 (mind you) that
`our frontiers are on the Himalaya' or the British interventions in Kuwait
or in Oman in the sixties ? And, obviously, there was still the USSR as a
rival to the USA (and it is now often too easy to forget that in the 1950's
the USSR was generally considered to be much more succesful than the USA and
with good reasons as a very serious challenge to the US - militarily and
economically). So, even in the 1950 and 60's the USA was only a limited
bully. And this even more so since
>
>3.)with the invention of the ICBM the possibilities of any nuclear power to
exert military pressure on another nuclear power are very limited. I think
that with the spread of weapons of mass-destruction (first to national
states the second stage will be to various insurgency movements) military
power as a mean of cohersion is becoming increasingly obsolete. And this not
only applies to war between major powers but increasingly to all-out war
between national states as well. If, to mention one possible example, Israel
were really to perform an all-out attack on Damascus, Syria would use
chemical and probably biological strikes on Israel, with Israel retaliating
with nuclear attacks on Syria. This would devastate the entire region.
>
>Now, these are still relatively small powers - does anybody seriously think
that China would risk the obliteration of its own territory and most of Asia
in really bullying another nuclear power (say Russia, the US or even Japan)
? I don't like using this arrogant word but in `reality' the modern military
machines are like Tyranosaurus Rex: awesome killing machines which are this
cumbersome as to be virtually doomed to extinction (this is M.van Creveld's
comparison whose `Future of War' should really be read in this respect). In
my view any historic comparison goes completely awry in the nuclear age.
>
>What we do witness is that states instead of to military power resort to
economic bullying (we see plenty of this nowadays) and, two, supporting
various insurgent groups and seccesionist movements. This, I think, was
already the strategy used against the USSR during the `second cold war' in
the Carter and Reagan-era and it is possible that the US will in future use
those kind of tactics against China and very much maybe vice-versa. (But,
again, think about it - what could China do in the USA, then ? Supply tanks
to the Black Muslims perhaps, land commandos to aid Californian
seccesionists ?)
>
> These are all interesting speculations but on the moment it sounds more
like the script for an episode of the `X-files' to me.
>
>Well - in future the truth will be `out there'
>
>Cheers
>Dr.R.J.Barendse
>rene.barendse@tip.nl
>
My first reaction is that (1) says that GB was nowhere near the
hegemon that the US was right after WWII, and (2) says neither was the
US. SO now that we've established that neither of them were the hegemon
that the US was right after WWII, where does that leave the comparison?
My second reaction is along the lines of the first, but in
more detail. The whole damn point of the 'hegemon' concept is that
there is an intermediate level of influence between an imperial power
and one among several powers in a balance of power, and that intermediate
level is quite clearly and distinctly first among several powers in
a balance of power. That does *not* imply enough power to go impose
you sovereignty on another power -- since, after all, that would be
an imperial power. The odd thing (not necessarily unique, but not
historically normal) about the capitalist system is that a hegemon
is *not* on the path between one of many power and imperial power (in
either direction) but on the path starting and ending at one of many
powers.
So 'hegemon' is not "as powerful as it gets, PERIOD", but
"as powerful as it seems to get in THIS period".
Perhaps a clue *is* to be found in the extreme centralisation of power
in the US after WWII, but especially in how hard the US government worked,
on behalf of American corporations, to eliminate that extreme disparity.
So, *of course*, GB was not unrivalled in Africa. It simply
on average got the bits it wanted the most, and left its rivals with
less desirable properties (look, for example, at the difference between
fraction of African land area in English speaking African countries and
the fraction of African population in English speaking African countries
for a rough notion of the relative agricultural productivity of the bits
the English ended up with). Hegemony is a distinct and qualitative step
*less* powerful than imperial power, though the hegemon's 'empires' (or
neo-empires) in the periphery confuses the issue.
The third reaction is to the third point. I don't believe for
a minute that military power is becoming obsolete. If mass national
armies are becoming obsolete, something else will take their place.
If the core powers get to the point that they are itching to fight it
out, they'll figure a way to fight it out.
Your buckeye correspondent in OZ,
Virtually,
Bruce McFarling, Ourimbah, NSW
ecbm@cc.newcastle.edu.au