The Hegemonist Challenge to Globalism (page 2 of 2)
By Jerry Harris

The Bush Doctrine

From the start of the Bush administration unilateralism was a key tool to undermine globalist policies. U.S. interests are held above all others because only the U.S. can promote and expand the free market, democracy and the Christian way of life. Other powers may be subjected to toxic weapons inspections, world courts and environmental treaties but the U.S. needs to stand above all these global restraints to carry out its mission as leader successfully. The goal is to rule over a world system, not participate in it as first among equals.

All this was evident in Bush’s aggressive speech to 25,000 at West Point in June, 2001. Throughout his talk the audience of future military leaders greeted the president with “shouts of approval” and “raucous applause.” (26) As Bush stated, “the only path to safety is the path of action…we must take the battle to the enemy…and confront the worst threats before they emerge.” Directing criticism at European leaders for being too morally weak to fight “evil” Bush continued, “Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree.” (27) This talk of right and wrong is tied to a Christian ideology that provides the hegemonists their particular brand of moral leadership and desire for national purity. It also merges with the neoconservative concern for ideology and Huntington’s call to defend Western civilization. As Bush further stated, “We are in a conflict between good and evil… and we will lead the world in opposing it.” “Civilized nations” fighting “chaos” should place the “safety..and peace of the planet” in the hands of the U.S. in the battle against “mad terrorists and tyrants.” (28) For Bush only the U.S. can lead this war to success and he wants the U.S to determine policy without interference.

With less Christian fervor Rumsfeld put forward the same doctrine in Foreign Affairs a month before Bush’s speech at West Point. As Rumsfeld articulates, “Our challenge in this century is…to defend our nation against the unknown, the uncertain, the unseen, and the unexpected…so we can defeat adversaries that have not yet emerged.” (29) This preemptive aggression for an endless war against non-existent enemies is repeated throughout Rumsfeld’s article. “Take the war to the enemy…the only defense is a good offense…unhindered access to space…sustain power in distant theaters…rule nothing out,”(30) Rumsfeld wants permanent war readiness as the overriding policy of the U.S. state. In Rumsfeld’s world even the shadow of a challenge is not to be tolerated. “We must develop new assets, the mere possession of which discourages adversaries from competing.” (31) In this scenario the role of global allies is to serve policy determined by the U.S. Thus “the mission must determine the coalition, the coalition must not determine the mission, or else the mission will be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.” (32) “Dumbed down” referring not to Bush, but the political policies and strategies of everyone else.

Battles Over Industrial Strategy

The hegemonist/globalist struggle also has an economic aspect that extends to industrial strategy. The military’s industrial base is international not transnational. Transnational corporations manufacture using global assembly lines and supply chains, are engaged in cross-border merger and acquisitions, participate heavily in foreign direct investments, and their foreign held assets, sales and employment average between 45% to 65% of their corporate totals. International corporations have the majority of their investments, production facilities and employment in their country of origin and mainly access global markets through exports rather than through foreign owned affiliates. The latter pattern is evident in the defense industry that has the majority of its assets, employment and sales inside the U.S. Among the big four defense contractors Lockheed Martin has 939 facilities in 457 cities in 45 states, Northrup Grumman is located in 44 states, Boeing has 61 facilities in 26 states and Raytheon has 79 sites in 26 states. These are the majority of their global production facilities. In terms of international sales the majority are exports and run well below the average for TNCs, just 21% for Boeing and 25% for Lockheed Martin. (33)

Defense corporations also rely on state protectionism. For example, in 2001 fully 72% of Lockheed Martin’s sales came from U.S. government procurements. In fact, a whole set of laws prevent sharing technologies or accepting foreign investments in key military industries. While international sales are growing, they are mainly national exports overseen by the Departments of Defense, Commerce and State, all with their own set of rules and restrictions. Furthermore, the Pentagon processes 75% of all U.S. military foreign sales. This means the Department of Defense (DOD) negotiates the terms, collects the funds and disburses them to private U.S. contractors. The main military manufacturer’s organization, The National Defense Industrial Association, has 9,000 corporate affiliates and 26,000 individual members with no foreign membership. Divided up among these contractors is the largest single slice of the federal government’s budget. Current military spending has hit $437 billion with $62 billion for procurement and $51 billion in research and development. (34)

Within this nationally protected economic base globalists are at work. Vance Coffman, Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin has called for open and integrated transatlantic markets in military production. (35) The powerful Atlantic Council has also advocated military industrial mergers and acquisitions between the E.U. and U.S., as well as common research and development. (36) In addition the Cato Institute, an influential conservative think tank, has called for open international investments in military markets. (37) On the European side General Klaus Naumann, former Chief of Staff of the German Federal Armed Forces, has backed industrial coordination in production and research. (38)

Worried about Bush and “growing differences between U.S. and European policies” the Commission of Transatlantic Security and Industrial Cooperation in the Twenty-First Century was recently formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The parent organization is chaired by former Senator Sam Nunn who oversees a $25 million endowment and a staff of 190 researches. Board members include Henry Kissinger, James Schlesinger, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Writing for the International Herald Tribune the Commission’s co-chairs, French aviation CEO Jean-Paul Bechat and former U.S. ambassador Felix Rohatyn, argued that national defense regulations have been rendered “obsolete and counterproductive by the internationalization of industrial operations.” Instead they envision a “trans-Atlantic defense market (in which) any unilateral approach would be unrealistic and unwise.” This market should have a “level play field with equivalent access to each other’s markets and the abandonment of ‘national champion’ industrial policies by governments and cultural norms that amount to ‘Buy American’ or ‘Buy European’ practices.” (39)

Such calls for global production has caused a fierce debate within the MICF and overlays political differences with conflicting economic strategies. Hegemonists see a world where “allies come and go” and the need to maintain an industrial base for national security is of “paramount consideration.” As argued in one military policy paper, “US strategy cannot be based solely on economic issues…we can ill afford to export the means of our future defeat.” (40) Hegemonists don’t want military production entangled with partners they don’t fully trust, particularly E.U. governments filled with globalists, social democrats and even communists.

Military production has been protected from globalization in two important areas. Financing is protected from speculative capital swings because of guaranteed state funding, and the national market is an unchallenged monopoly. For example, Raytheon is financed by more than 4,000 military funded programs and is included in over 450 major programs in the Defense Appropriations Bill of 2002. After the demise of the Soviet Union the industry was subject to cutbacks and internal competition that led to large-scale mergers, but this centralization was not driven by global competitive pressure because the industrial base was not subject to transnationalized competition. But shrinking post-Soviet defense procurements and the inherent logic for capitalist expansion is driving MICF globalists towards building a transatlantic market and shifting to a transnational strategy. Such economic strategy also aligns with a multilateralist political agenda. This adds an important economic factor in the globalist/hegemonist struggle for power and is a major fault line inside the MICF.

The Impact of Information Technology

Lastly we can turn briefly to the impact of information technological (IT) that laid the foundation for another important change, a new military doctrine labeled the “Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA).” New technology transformed the command, control, communications and reach of military organization in the same manner that information technologies transformed the organization of TNCs. As Rumsfeld has argued, “we must take the leap into the information age, which is the critical foundation of all our transformation efforts.” (41) Hegemonists believe information technology will provide an unchallenged competitive edge. As pointed out in a study at the Naval Postgraduate School, “RMA proponents argue the United States should take advantage of its current technological edge to accelerate a revolution in warfare that will sustain U.S. power and leadership into the future and that can be exploited in U.S. foreign policy to build an international system to the nation’s liking.” (42) This is reflected in Rumsfeld’s call for a 125% increase in spending for information technology, a 145% increase in space capabilities, and a 28% increase in programs that can attack enemy information networks. In turn this means cuts to previously important programs like Peacekeeper missles, the F-14 fighter, and the Army’s Crusader cannon.

Although microprocessors are thoroughly integrated into the production and products of the defense industry, military organizations are still debating how to expand and integrate their new weapons into warfare and organizational strategy. These weapons are designed to make use of information technologies but are tied to non-informational warfare strategies. The effort is to switch from platform-centric models of operation that rely on large individual military assets that engage targets head-to-head, to decentralized networks of smaller, faster weapon nodes that self-synchronize and engage more rapidly from all directions. This transformation parallels the period over a decade ago when corporations were tied to large individual mainframe computers and didn’t understand how to structure themselves around PCs. Only when corporations learned how to use networked productive capacities did informational capitalism take-off. They had to adopt their business strategies to their new organizational capabilities, not use the new technology with old strategies. This corporate debate was often structured around the transformation from industrial to informational capitalism.

The military faces this same debate today. As Richard Harknett points out, “the growing ubiquity of personal computers and other information technologies is viewed not only as the basis for a new societal age but as the foundation for a new form of warfare as well…the creation, accumulation, and manipulation of information has always been a central part of human activity (warfare in particular).” (43) Another study states “A particular understanding of the late twentieth-century shift from the industrial age to the information age drives the Networked Centric Warfare vision.” (44) While some question whether networked organizational methods can succeed in such a highly bureaucratic and hierarchical institution as the military growing support for RMA is evident. For example, an important Army project titled ‘Force XXI,’ states its goal “is to create the 21st century army that is ‘digitized and redesigned to harness the power of information-age warfare.’ ” (45) Support is also evident in the Navy, as another study notes, “ Every Sailor and Marine has an opportunity to be a part of something significant, since transformations of this magnitude—from an industrial-age Navy to an information-age Navy—rarely occur.” (46) More importantly Rumsfeld has ordered the Pentagon to prepare battle scenarios with Iraq based on Networked Centric Warfare.

Promoters of Networked Centric Warfare (NCW) believe it will change “doctrine, platforms, training and culture.” (47) The key focus is on networked information of “unprecedented pace and intensity.” that would give officers and troops real-time “situational awareness to rule the battlespace.” (48) Just-in-time warfare could let commanders coordinate a vast system of troops and machines that rapidly respond to changing conditions to out maneuver their enemy. In adopting NCW the military looks towards “applying the lessons learned from the commercial sector…to become a ‘brain-rich organization.” (49) This IT scenario has obvious links to TNC strategies rooted in speed, creative intellectual capital and greater centralization of command.

But while some advocate “developing human capital” others see removing the “human element” and creating automated cybernetic systems to do much of the fighting. (50) This parallels corporate discussions on how to use intellectual capital to create machines that can minimize human labor and lower the cost of production. For the military IT fighting machines can minimize the cost of war with fewer U.S. casualties. Some in the military argue that “RMA with its prospect of ‘immaculate’ war-making (will) change the equation between cost and benefit, and make war more bearable in the public eye.” (51) Such political considerations are important points in the military’s long sought solution to the Vietnam syndrome of extended wars and high causalities undermining popular support. As another study notes, “the technological and organizational innovations springing from the RMA may make US military objectives attainable at lower costs than ever before—a consideration that stands to shape US commitment to military coercion…a President able to control casualties is in a better position to maintain popular support for his own war policy (and) domestic legitimacy for military intervention. ” (52)

Conclusion

The above analysis reveals the sharp contradictions under which the Bush administration must operate. Their hegemonic strategy rejects the leadership of the globalists in favor of an U.S. led process that reinforces the role of the national state through its monopoly over violence. But anti-war sentiment and globalist’s political opposition are creating enough pressures to cause the hegemonists to adopt and moderate their rhetoric and aims. Their bomb-don’t-build strategy is failing in post-Taliban Afghanistan and pushing the administration towards deeper nation building efforts. But more evident and explosive has been the visible conflict over Iraq. The globalist counter-offensive in September by Republican heavyweights Henry Kissinger, Brent Scrowcroft, Lawrence Eagleburger and James Baker hit the media and hegemonists with full force. In turn Cheney ran to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Rumsfeld ordered-up an audience of Marines to urge unilateral war on Iraq. Open conflict at such elite levels is rarely seen in public, and it led to Bush going to the U.N. to seek an international consensus.

Although hegemonists believe a unilateral attack is key to asserting U.S. power, they have been forced to retreat and seek U.N. sanctions. This is the centrist position represented by Powell. The Powell doctrine for military involvement developed with Casper Wienberger during the Reagan years advocates having clear national interests, using overwhelming force, gaining public support and exhausting all diplomatic means. But one key element of the doctrine is missing for the war on Iraq, an exit strategy. This may well be because there is no exit strategy, but rather plans for permanent occupation and control of Iraq’s oil. This would mesh with hegemonist’s economic strategies of energy independence as well as threaten Russian and French inroads into Iraq’s oil industry. Hegemonists see transnational economics as a failure with crisis after crisis creating instability in Asia, Turkey and Latin America. Seizing control of the world’s second largest oil reserves puts a vital section of the world economy under greater U.S. domination. Military bases in Iraq would also provide strategic geopolitical power. All this translates into greater stability and order from the hegemonist’s viewpoint. From the globalist’s perspective it is a world ready to explode.

Redefining the U.S. relationship with Europe is also rife with contradictions. The hegemonists want the E.U. to do nation building while the U.S. does carpet-bombing. It’s a division of labor in which “Americans (are) a sort of global mercenary force and the Europeans international social workers.” (53) Hardly the type of globalism that E.U. leaders expect or desire, relegated to cleaning-up the human disaster created by U.S. bombs. As French foreign policy expert Gilles Andreani observes, “this is a new attitude, a contempt toward Europeans that we never saw before.” (54) Indeed, transnationalists on both sides of the Atlantic are deeply disturbed. The invasion of Iraq may be the first war initiated by a minority fraction of the ruling class, leaving little room for hegemonist errors or miscalculations. Whether or not the war is launched their overall strategy is a high stakes gamble that will set the stage for struggle in the U.S. and the world.

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