The Shortest Century

 “The class of exploiters, the landowners and capitalists, has not disappeared and cannot disappear all at once under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The exploiters have been smashed, but not destroyed. They still have an international base in the form of international capital, of which they are a branch. They still retain certain means of production in part, they still have money, they still have vast social connections." - V.I. Lenin, 1919

“The American Century began in 1945 and ended in 1953” - Unknown.

In the early 1990s, the 'collapse' of the Soviet Union and the triumph of liberal democracy, aka 'free market capitalism', bookmarked the end of a century of ideological struggle between the capitalist West and communist East. Almost 30 tears on, with Russia's re-entry into the geopolitical power game and the strategic balance of the Cold War restored, new battle lines have emerged. Eurasianism and multipolarity are the latest buzzwords in the lexicon of political analysis, but what do they really mean? We know from history that nationalism is not the path to world peace, but when the alternative is a global dictatorship of organised capital, surely the principle of sovereign equality is to be defended at all costs. Is this the lens through which to best understand the current historical moment? Or are we seeing a re-hash of a centuries old imperial rivalry between land and sea powers? Or is it something else altogether?


According to contemporary historiography, WWII marked the end of three centuries of British imperial rule and ushered in what scholars have referred to as the Pax Americana - a state of relative international peace overseen by US military and economic hegemony - a term of breathtaking irony when one considers the body counts of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. For as long as America's storm-troopers have policed the world, the jackboot of neo-colonialism has trampled the tender shoots of democracy, independence and people's liberation wherever they have emerged. US military bases now cover almost the entire surface of the globe, with a few notable exceptions, Russia, China, Iran, the DPRK, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia. Welcome to the American Empire.

Or is it?

Rather than ‘American Empire’, my preferred nomenclature is the ‘Atlantic world economy’, a transnational corporate plutocracy in which the US national security state acts as the enforcement arm; the 300lb doorman at a game of high stakes international poker. Since the advent of the joint stock company the state has been the protector of the capitalist class, who determine its foreign policies. The real locus of power resides not in parliaments, but in the corporate and financial institutions which they serve and protect. From the East India Companies of Britain and the Netherlands, to the United Fruit Company, to today’s oil giants, we see the blueprint of corporate fascism in the form of too-big-to-fail multinational corporations; virtually empires unto themselves.

Power operates through a web of interconnected relations within and between states, and through a multitude of networks operating in various political and economic spheres. One such network bears the humorous acronym FUKUS: the all-powerful, indivisible triple etente of France, the UK, and the US, who along with lesser allies operate under perfidious nom de plumes such as “the international community”, “the free world”, and “the first world”.

When it comes to crimes against humanity, the US seldom acts unilaterally. As I have previously noted, it was Tony Blair, erstwhile spokesman for the globalist New World Order (TM) who led the pre-emptive cheer for the removal of Saddam Hussein, just as Nicolas Sarkozy would for Muammar Qaddafi. That Bush Jr and Hillary-Obama would take centre stage during these proceedings should come as no surprise. It was after all an American by the name of Louis Hartmann who patented the limelight back in 1879.

An investigation into elite supra-national institutions such as the French based Pinay Circle and the trans-national Safari Club provides vital clues for understanding the role of American imperium in the post WWII period. By the late 1970s, facing the scandals uncovered by the Church Committee, the US congress had been forced to reign in the worst abuses of its intelligence agencies. The Ford and Carter administrations worked at a diplomatic level to maintain a trajectory towards détente with the USSR and prevent both countries from being drawn into proxy conflicts. However executive authority had by this time been well and truly usurped by an unlikely cabal of Strasserist neocons, Jewish Zionists and Christian fundamentalists who continue to occupy senior positions within the US administration to this day. Under the auspices of George H.W. Bush, then director of the CIA, and with the cooperation of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and France, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International was established as a giant money laundering machine to bankroll proxy wars in Zaire, Angola, Somalia and Ethiopia. The same mechanism would later be used fund and arm the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union.

The Afghanistan war is interesting in a broader historical context. The fabled “graveyard of empires” has fought off would-be conquerors from Alexander the Great to Napoleon. Today it remains a prize not so much for its poppy fields which supply 90% of the worlds legal and illegal opium, nor for its reported trillions in rare earth minerals, but rather for the geostrategic position it occupies on the “grand chessboard” - the last obstacle to Eurasian integration on two important axes: China-Iran, and Russia-India/Pakistan.

According to MacKinder, Spykman and Maher, the object of the game of empire is control of the Eurasian supercontinent. But the rules of engagement have changed significantly since the fall of the Soviet Union, and more so in the context of the Global War On Terror. One of the most devastating outcomes of this tectonic shift has been the collapse of the modern Arab state. Witness the wastelands of present day Libya, once the wealthiest and most advanced nation in all of Africa, which now boasts open slave markets. Witness Syria, which has suffered seven years of brutal war sponsored by the usual suspects, leaving over half a million dead and turning half its population into refugees. Witness the literally unspeakable horror of white phosphorous, cholera and famine visited daily upon millions in Yemen, where half a million children are dying of starvation while the US, UK and France boast record arms sales to the Saudis.

The war criminal Blair is known for peddling his vision of a post-Westphalian 'international community' in the lead up to the Iraq war, while al Qaeda leader Abu Abd al-Rahman Atiyyatullah decreed at the time that the centuries old system of nation states should be replaced by an eternal Islamic Caliphate. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. In the face of this, Moscow and Beijing appear at least to pay lip service to the idea of a rules based international order based on the principle of sovereign equality.

Russia’s Lavrov meets with Henry Kissinger at UN. Photo: TASS

Rather than the ideological tryst of the Cold War, or the struggle between sea and land powers described by MacKinder, et al, the prevailing dialectic in the present historical moment seems to be one of state sovereignty versus globalism, with support for the former coming from the most unlikely quarters. The explicit contradiction of the Trump presidency is that Trump has cast himself as a nationalist, swimming against the prevailing tide of globalism. Trump's refusal to confront Russia, it is commonly argued, has earned him the disapproval of the so-called 'deep state', while his 'isolationism' is perceived as diminishing US power. But while this seems a plausible explanation for attempts by the powers that be to frustrate his policy ambitions, one can't help observe that years of foreign and economic policy ostensibly aimed at driving a wedge between China and Russia have effectively managed to corral them into a more powerful bloc.

Returning to our original question, what if what we are seeing unfold today, from Brazil to the Congo, is viewed not through the lens of a clash of ideologies, nor the rivalry of nation states, but rather as an inter-continental carve-up of the global south between imperial corporations? What if the desperate moves to impeach Trump are merely the last bleatings of old power structures which have outlived their usefulness? What if the multipolar world is the very same New World Order which Bush 41 forespoke? Putin, for all his populist bravado, was the protégé of the treasonous Boris Yeltsin, and rose to power with the blessing of international relations mastermind Henry Kissinger - the serial war criminal who in his role as Secretary of State had brokered the seismic détente between the Nixon administration and China’s Communist Party in 1972, and who at the tender age of 95 continues to play a key intermediary role between the US and its traditional rivals. China, despite the magical thinking of many on the left, is no longer socialist but social-imperialist, as is clearly evident not just in its export of capital, but also in its growing billionaire class, 'special economic zones', appalling labour conditions and violent repression of student activism and organised labour. It also happens to be the largest single holder of US foreign debt.

Perhaps a clue to making sense of the fecal smear parading as the Trump presidency is that we are closer to the endgame than we think. If this is the case, then those who see de-dollarisation as an end in itself may be sorely disappointed by what comes next. One consolation is that great power confrontation may not be necessary, because integration at the highest levels of geopolitical and financial power is already complete. Either way, any regional or extra-regional re-aliment will be of little or no consequence if the Pax Eurasia leaves the same players holding all the cards.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

- TS Eliot, The Hollow Men