The American empire

By Ignacio Ramonet, Le Monde diplomatique, February 1997

There are periods in history when the power of a single state, following the defeat or disintegration of its main rivals, reaches over the whole of the known world. Since the sixteenth century three powers—Spain, France and Britain—have taken it in turn to dominate the world militarily, economically and—up to a point—culturally.

The real rise of the British empire dates from Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815 and lasted for another century until mounting German ambitions led to the first and second world wars. These two conflicts exhausted the Old World and led to the rise of the political power that has dominated the twentieth century, the United States of America (1). After 1945 the US, together with what was then the other superpower, the Soviet Union, established a sort of world condominium characterised by fierce rivalry. This became known as the cold war.

That confrontation came to an end in 1991 with the implosion of the Soviet Union. Since then the US has enjoyed a supremacy unknown to any world power for more than a century. Henceforth the American empire [was] the only one in the world, an exclusive hegemony, the first time that this strange phenomenon has occurred in the history of mankind (2).

In today's world the predominance of an empire is no longer measured solely by its territorial reach. Apart from military capacity, it stems from supremacy in the control of economic networks, financial flows, technical innovation, trade and many other areas, visible and invisible. In this sense no other country controls the lands and seas as completely as the United States.

America, aware that it now holds most of the cards and elated by its booming economy (social deficiencies notwithstanding), is again inclined to order the world about. In the last few years it has restored democracy in Haiti, countered North Korean attempts at intimidation, flexed its naval muscles when China eyed Taiwan across the Formosa strait. With the Dayton accords, it has imposed a settlement of the Bosnian conflict and safeguarded peace in the area through the presence of US troops. Finally it tried to ensure that negotiations for a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would continue.

The US is now being increasingly called on to mediate in the event of a political impasse. Recently the Serbian opposition to Slobodan Milosevic asked Washington for support. Even Algeria, through Ait Ahmed, has just called on the US to help stop the spiral of violence (3).

As a result the US is displaying a growing tendency to set its own criteria and act purely in its own interests in every part of the world, especially in black Africa, paying scant regard to the opinions of international organisations like the United Nations. It imposed economic sanctions on Cuba, Libya and Iran and arbitrarily opposed Boutros Boutros-Ghali's reappointment as UN secretary-general. Last week the new defence secretary, William Cohen, categorically refused France's reasonable request that a European officer be appointed head of NATO's Southern Command, saying the issue was non-negotiable (4). The US' appetite for power has even brought it to claim (in the context of the Helms-Burton Act passed to underpin the trade embargo against Cuba) that US law is applicable outside American territory.

One of the US' national priorities is the conquest of market shares. Although traditionally America's external trade balance is in deficit, exports of goods and services have accounted for a third of its economic growth since 1987. Secretary of state Madeleine Albright confirmed last month that one of her government's main objectives was to ensure that US economic interests could be pursued on a world scale (5).

The best ideological weapons this business diplomacy can turn to for its export drive are films and TV programmes. Between 1985 and 1994, in the Europe of the Fifteen, the market share of American films increased from 56% to 76%. In 1993 53% of the programmes broadcast in Europe by the 50 national television networks (excluding cable and satellite TV), were American products. Over the ten years between 1985 and 1995, Europe's audiovisual trade balance with the US tilted dramatically in America's favour, with Europe's deficit increasing from 500 million dollars to four billion dollars. In the process, a quarter of a million jobs quietly vanished.

The picture is similar in other domains: aerospace, computer technology, network telecommunications (Internet), oil and so on, not to mention the colossal potential of US pension funds, the most formidable strike force in the world's financial markets. At the present moment there is no other power able to compete with the US or stand up to its economic offensives.

But is that a valid reason for imposing US law on the rest of the world? With various monsters of the future—China, India, the European Union—already appearing on the geopolitical horizon, can the United States persist in its imperial pretensions without some risk of major conflict in the medium term? Empires do not last for ever.

Notes

(1) See Claude Julien, L'Empire américain, Grasset, Paris, 1968.

(2) Paul-Marie de La Gorce, Le Dernier Empire, Grasset, Paris, 1996, p. 16.

(3) Libération, 24 January 1997.

(4)Le Monde, 24 January 1997.

(5)The Wall Street Journal Europe, Brussels, 21 January 1997.