snippet from article by Doug Lorimer

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday November 09, 2002 18:30 by dougie

Imperialism in the 21st Century

Imperialism in the 21st Century
by Doug Lorimer

CONTENTS

Rise of US imperialism
Decolonisation and US imperialism
Vietnam War
‘Marshall Plan’ for Third World
Transnational corporations
Expansion of the state
State economic intervention
The last empire
Growing social and political instability
Notes

"The three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy [are] to prevent collusion and maintain security among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together."1 This statement was not made by an official in the ancient Roman imperial bureaucracy. It was made by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a central figure in the US foreign policy elite, national security adviser to us President Jimmy Carter and chief architect of Washington’s policy of creating a network of fanatically anti-communist Islamic terrorists to spearhead the counter-revolutionary war against the Afghan workers and peasants’ government in the late 1970s. It was Brzezinski who infamously defended US support for the ultra-reactionary Taliban with the comment: "What is more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet empire? A few stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"2

Brzezinski’s statement about the "grand imperatives" of US imperial policy gives a candid insight into how the us ruling elite views the world. The "vassals", among whom it is necessary to "prevent collusion and maintain security", are the other imperialist powers. Like the vassals of medieval Europe, the other imperialist powers hold sovereignty within their own "fiefs" but are required to render general support, and particularly military service, to the supreme lord in Washington.

The "tributaries" who are to be kept "pliant and protected" are the semicolonial capitalist regimes of Asia, Africa and Latin America, from whom the imperialist powers extort tribute in the form of colonial super-profits, debt service payments and cheap raw materials, oil in particular.

The "barbarians", whom it is necessary to keep "from coming together", are the oppressed and exploited mass of humanity, since when they do "come together"—that is, act collectively in their own interests—pose a threat to the very existence of "civilisation" as the Brzezinskis conceive of it........