Democracy And Hegemony

We are very far,here, from the unifying discourse spouted by fashionable economists on the self-regulating market as a guarantor of peace. The American ruling class knows that economics are political, and that it is relations of power-including military power-that command the market. There will be no "global market" without an American military empire, they say-for the above-mentioned article is but one amongst hundreds. This brutal frankness is no doubt possible over there because the media are sufficiently controlled for the government’s strategic objective never to be subject to debate; freedom of expression-a freedom which often reaches the burlesque-applies only to matters involving individuals and, beyond them, to conflicts within the ruling class, rendered perfectly opaque in these conditions. There is no political force capable of combating the system and enlightening a public manipulated with such consummate ease. More curious is the silence of the European powers and some others who, pretending not to read the press on the other side of the Atlantic (I dare not think they have no idea what it says), forbid their adversaries from hinting at the very existence of Washington’s global strategy, falling back instead on facile accusations that these opponents harbour a "conspiratorial" view of history, or even that they are behaving like visionaries who see the shadow of the "Great Satan" around every corner. And yet the strategy in question is quite limpid. The US is less convinced than its allies, so it would seem, of the virtues of competition and "fair play"-virtues, incidentally, which it violates with impunity every time its interests are at stake (cf. The banana wars among many other instances). Washington knows that, without its military hegemony, American cannot force the world to finance its savings deficit, which is the condition for the artificial maintenance of its economic position. The instrument of choice in the imposition of this hegemony is therefore military, as the highest US authorities never tire of repeating. This hegemony, which in turn guarantees that of the Triad (US-Canada; Japan; Western Europe) over the global system, would therefore demand that the US’s allies accept to navigate in its wake. The UK, Germany and Japan have put forth no objections, not even "cultural" ones. But the speeches European politicians feed their audiences-with respect to Europe’s economic power-thereby lose any real significance. By placing itself exclusively on the terrain of mercantile disputes, with no project of its own, Europe is beaten from the start. Washington knows this well. http://site.mweb.co.zw/mirror/index.cfm?id=35&pubdate=1999-04-23

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