Imperial Overstretch : George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire

Rating:
Summary: Useful analysis, poor politics
Review:
On the evening of 9/11, Bush told his cronies, "This is a great opportunity." The US ruling class seized the chance to expand its empire.

Its attack on Afghanistan killed more than 3,000 civilians and overthrew the Taliban government - which had not attacked the USA. It failed to get the Al Qaida leadership, which had attacked the USA. Then Bush, with Labour's support, attacked Iraq, which has never attacked the USA, killing, according to The Lancet`s recent estimate, more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children.

The US occupation government in Iraq and its puppet have kept Saddam's labour laws banning some trade unions and forbidding all strikes. In June 2003, US troops stormed the Iraqi Workers' Federation of Trade Unions' offices and arrested its leaders.

The authors trace the bones of empire in the drive for oil and bases. They describe the Bush crowd and Bush himself. They note the traditional US ruling class aim of `scaring the hell out of the American people.' As ever, empire brings aggressive wars `to prevent war', violent military occupations and vile war crimes.

The US is indeed a giant with feet of clay. Its military forces are dispersed over 153 countries. Its leadership is pathetically inadequate to the impossibly huge tasks of running an empire. Its economy is overstretched. The government deficit was $375 billion last year, the trade deficit $435 billion, so Bush had to borrow $500 billion abroad. An empire in decline produces chaos at home and abroad.

How do the authors suggest that we beat this empire? By building links between the campaigning environmental, peace and anti-globalisation groups, and by ever-bigger demonstrations and Forums! But occasional international contacts between activists change nothing. The endemic failures of the Second and Third Internationals prove this beyond doubt.

Their approach is pure anarchism. It rejects working in trade unions and rejects workers' nationalism - it is a recipe for permanent subjection and defeat. Only solid working class politics, rooted in national trade unions, can defeat the capitalist classes who run the empires.


Rating:
Summary: IMPERIAL OVERSTRETCH
Review: Imperial Overstretch at first glance seems an odd title for a book about a nation that was founded in a revolution against an empire. Indeed, the principles upon which it was created were based on the democratic concepts of the Enlightenment. The United States of America was to be a republic whose ideology held the concepts of imperialism and colonialism to be anathema. The authors, however, in this concise, well reasoned, and well-documented book, present a compelling case for the fact that the US began its imperial growth virtually from its beginning.

Empires have existed since the beginning of recorded history. As a civilization becomes successful, it grows, conquering new lands in hopes of increasing its wealth. Paul Kennedy described the organic process of the growth and decline of empires in his book The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. It is from Kennedy that the authors get the term imperial overstretch. As an empire grows, it expands its wealth and the military power needed to protect that wealth and to make new conquests. However, this process of growth contains the seeds of its own destruction. The larger the empire becomes, the more of its economic production is devoted to the military costs required to maintain and expand its power. At some point, the imperial power reaches overstretch and begins its decline as the cost of maintaining that power becomes more than the economy can sustain. Sustainable power ultimately results from a strong economy rather than a strong military.

Roger Burbach and Jim Tarbell have applied this mode of analysis to the United States at the beginning of the Twenty-first century. Although the US does not have a colonial empire like Rome or Britain had, its military and economic hegemony translate into imperial power. The book shows how the current Bush administration in general, and the war in Iraq in particular, have pushed the nation into imperial overstretch and decline. The heart of this slim, eminently readable volume is an analysis of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. It shows how the war is part of an attempt to establish US hegemony in the oil and gas rich areas of Southern Asia. It looks at how the Bush administration achieved power, and the incompetent way it has abused that power, especially in Iraq. It gained power with the support of an unprecedented fund raising apparatus among the ranks of corporate conservatives, especially in the energy industries, and a well-organized fundamentalist Christian right. Unfortunately the ability to gain political power does not guarantee the ability to govern effectively. Influence over decision making within the administration is tightly controlled by a group of hubristic neo-conservative and militarist zealots. The war on terrorism, and the war on Iraq, which the administration has dishonestly convinced the American public are one in the same, has been a series of arrogant, bad decisions that were disastrously executed.

All of this has appeared in the media, but not enough of it in the mass media. The best selling books on the war in Iraq tend to focus on narrower subjects. Burbach and Tarbell have put it all together into a coherent analysis, which shows how and why it happened. It places the war into an historical context, and presents the likely economic results of the debacle. It is an important book that is essential reading for anyone who wants a comprehensive understanding of the war in Iraq and its likely outcome.

It is easy to understand the tragedy of the Iraq war in terms of human suffering and wasted resources, but why should one be concerned about the decline of yet another imperial power? The United States gained its international hegemony after World War II, in no small measure due to the encouragement of its allies. At that time, it was responsible for roughly 50% of the world's economic output. But the Cold War was basically a series of wars of containment. The Bush administration has gone beyond that by trying to expand its imperial power through wars of preemption, with dangerous disregard to international institutions and alliances. The US has become a rogue nation. The international system that was created at the end of World War II is in danger of collapsing. (Bush to the UN: Vote with us or become irrelevant.) The dangers of war and terrorism have increased. Secondly, the US is still the world's largest economy, and the rest of the world depends on a healthy US economy. The trade deficit is currently about a half trillion dollars per year and growing, and the United States has a net debt obligation to the rest of the world of around three trillion dollars. Projections for the future are even bleaker. Most of this has been caused, as Kennedy suggests, by the military expenditures necessary to try to maintain global hegemony.

Burbach and Tarbell, however, refuse to succumb to bleak depression. They find hope in such growing grassroots movements as environmentalism, anti-corporate-globalization, and anti-war. They see the ultimate solution as a fundamental change in our current capitalist system (something which they admit could take centuries). Unfortunately, neither the US nor the planet can afford to wait centuries. Something needs to be done now. What is required is a change of government to one willing to work within the international system to maintain peace and stop despoiling the environment. This is more than imperial decline. It may be our last chance to avoid global decline