The government of the world that America has a future?

Peter GOWAN
translated from English by Franoise Armengaud, Fabrice Bensimon and Nanon Gardin * Current Marx 2002, n. 31 (gennaio-june) The United States is not only the most powerful state in the world today, they dominate the system of relations between states. Essentially, the "global governance" exists only insofar as the U.S. government wants or permits. Of course, international agencies make many decisions collectively, often without that U.S. officials do not intervene strongly. But they do so only according to the pleasure of Washington. The United States call the shots (1). My question is whether it is likely that this arrangement works, not in the sense of whether it will solve the major problems of the planet, but much more limited in the sense of its practical viability in the medium term. In short, my answer is that the government of the world by the United States is not based on secure foundations, and is already in decline because it lacks the proper tools to maintain its supremacy in the conditions of post-Cold War era. If the current Bush administration does not opt for drastic action to reassert its political domination, the model that prevailed during the last decade continue. This is a model based on dazzling demonstrations regarding political initiative from the United States, all other major powers who joined them, before the U.S. State consolidates local triumphs strengthening basic Structural its world power. In response to changing that results, other social and political forces make connections detrimental to global supremacy of the United States.

The Marxist political analysis

In exploring this theme, I'll try to be what I think the Marxist political analysis of international relations. Isaac Deutscher was, of course, a

great master of the international political analysis. But it really worked in another historical period the last phase of the world communist movement. It was a time when there was a cosmopolitan movement with supporters in all countries of the world: a social movement and political significance, to reform the world, for a secular human development project that would unite humanity. Nothing better expresses what has disappeared with the collapse of this movement that a character like Osama bin Laden. Here, we see people who find expression in a character whose social base is composed of precapitalist social structures located in payys like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and whose message is a form weird conservative revolution against the modern world. In summary, there is currently no international political force with a positive vision of a world beyond capitalism. The movement against capitalist globalization is interesting and is, potentially, important sign of something new. But it remains a highly defensive movement of protest against what happened, rather than questioning positive policy, to a world order of a different type. So here's how I see the context of any Marxist analysis of the international political situation: we are in a phase where there is no real political movement of emancipation participation that challenges the core capitalist states by an alternative program positive which is visible to the great mass of humanity. So, it radically alters the concerns and efforts of the major capitalist states. However, at the same time, it would be a grave mistake for us to imagine that political protest by anti-capitalist forces has disappeared from the horizon. The disarray of the left and changes of social power against the labor movement in many parts of the world did not end the possibility of further challenged by the labor movement during the next decade. I would say that the probable increase in conflicts between capitalist states and the essential contradictions of the new model of capitalism for the semi-peripheral countries may well open new perspectives for a new left.

I. Future prospects of contemporary capitalism

Many people, especially on the left, see the new international context marked by the extraordinary dominance of the United States. And they also believe that it is marked by a grand unification of forces of the capitalist world led by the United States.

Global capitalism or more?

Both the left and right, we share the widespread view according to which capitalism is, in a sense, unified internationally in the 1990s, while outside the scope of the nation state (2). Thus, by "becoming global" capitalism has finally solved the contradiction there was to be both national and transnational: he became, in the words of Robert Cox, a "nebulous" world in which all Western states are creatures. Or, in the words of Kees Van der Pijl (although not necessarily according to its analysis), we now have a "transnational ruling class" (3). According to this view, it is conceivable that the activities of the U.S. government are not only guided by the motivations and objectives purely American, but by those of a class or a transnational capitalist system. Even within the European Union (EU) and the Euro zone, it is still not possible to speak of a single European capitalism. An indication of the persistence of national capitalisms in CPUE is that member states retain control of a wide range of instruments always very critical in shaping the strategic capital accumulation. The legal and institutional structure of financial systems, business law, taxation, export policy, policies on capital flows, most of the funding of Research and Development and the ability to use the huge markets and state budgets to influence patterns of accumulation: these instruments are still in the hands of member states. European capitalisms now consult widely in their relations with the other two centers, vis--vis the East and toward their own working class.But vis--vis each other, they have no "disarmed" the political and institutional (6).

The contradiction between the national and the transnational operates always
Thus, the emphasis of the work of many analysts today on the "necessity" of global markets with global rules is correct. But this is the case for a long time and it is only partially correct. Another truth is the need for each capitalism centered on an area to protect against all kinds of potential threats that other centers account for its own models and strategies of transnational capital accumulation. Thus the center of capitalism remains torn between the "need" to cooperate on transnational and international and of engaging in rivalries between capitalist areas. Such rivalries can be mitigated in certain circumstances, and exacerbated in others. They can frequently be reduced by policies that vent problems from the center towards the periphery. But as it stands, they are far from dead. The liberal ideology of the 1990s, of course, presented as having these rivalries disappeared. It wants us to believe that the international economy has now become a sports governed by clear rules and global and therefore each company in the world economy is in competition with other companies without national preference does not play.And this imagery is reinforced by the increasing role played by multinationals in different policy when they sit around a table as is the case in organizations like the European Round Table (Round Table European) or the Trans Atlantic Business Dialogue (Transatlantic Business Dialogue). It seems that the rules of the global economy are set by companies alone, without states intervening. However, if you look closer, you realize that over the last twelve years, real progress towards a set of rules of the global market truly depoliticized were tenuous. The WTO is fragile and it hardly goes beyond GATT and lack of clear principles and has a tendency to commercialism and trade regulated, particularly through the ruse of anti-dumping instruments and any a range of other non-tariff barriers. No agreement has been possible on the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment), and you can see clusters of multinational precisely as a process of negotiation and horse trading between multinational national process which substitutes a regime genuinely liberal in its principles and its rules. In such bargaining, there may be important points of agreement

on the periphery of the opening or dismantling of social rights. But we are still far from clear rules of international competition between companies, to a point where they could provide protection and support from their respective states (or collective protection CPUE) (7). This is a growing problem in circumstances where legislation, formal public institutions, tax systems, and political regulation of companies, are increasingly at the center of the accumu lation of capital, at the time of "services" and information products. That shapes these rules and institutions? Regardless of whether this agent, it can shape the rules of international capital accumulation. Thus, global rules are increasingly necessary, while the national nature of capitalism makes it very difficult to agree on such rules. It is precisely the willingness of different capitalist centers to expand the scope of their accumulation models as widely as possible, and at the same time the capacity of each center to handle the institutional and social structures in favor of its own center which introduce power politics in international relations capitalists. Each center is trying to use the different instruments of political influence to extend the range of its own capital and to protect its accumulation models by using his political influence of institutional preference. Of course, none of this prohibits major centers to negotiate reciprocal open their markets to benefit mutually. Such negotiations have also resulted in many areas, not only as very small and often temporary alliances between multinationals from various special centers, but also in the form of wider agreements such as the cycle Uruguay Round. But these agreements are still fragile and typical thing, closely related to politics: they are based more on power relations on the implementation of abstract liberal rules. This is seen even in the event that these agreements were the deepest and widest: within the European Union.

Towards an imperial resolution of this contradiction?

The possibility exists in principle that states zones Non-capitalistic American Center are hollowed out and converted to vector control of a single capitalist, whose center is the United States. In their role of supporting the safety and scope of their respective capitalist class,

would replace one of the organizers of the discipline of the working world of a junior political loyalty to the American Center. At the same time, the state would acquire an American financial sovereignty of the property relations within the Centre, its financial system acting as a single center that would organize and reorganize as a single central capitalism. There are not evident in this direction within the United States and, in many ways, the British state has become a sort of hollow satellite of American capitalism. The metaphor for this type of development would be "Wimbledonisation" Wimbledon is a tournament player without valid British Columbia. This trend is evident in the case of the City of London, which acts as an offshore financial center exerting considerable influence within the British state. But even in the case of England, the "Wimbledonisation" has its limits, and they remain much higher in continental Europe and the Pacific and Southeast Asia (8). During the 1990s, the U.S. boom has acted as a centripetal force of integration, allowing the United States and their companies have a strong influence of "non-political" on the market rules, and the domination of capital Americans in the field of finance and new technologies that gave them an important influence on the international rules governing these sectors. But these are precarious victories. The ability of other capitalist states of the Centre to react defensively to such pressure remains substantial.

II. Domination of the Centre by the United States in the political structure of the Cold War and the illusory triumph of American soft power thereafter
With hindsight, one can see that the international political system of the Cold War was an immensely solid structure to ensure the political dominance of the United States over the capitalist world and, in this work to rule, as a set of mechanisms for protection and progression of capital accumulation by the USA. Confronted with the problem of communism after World War II, the capitalist classes around the world have turned to the United States for support and protection. The United States responded by security

agreements with Western Europe, the Pacific and South East Asia and other parts of the non-Communist world, establishing their bases in these territories and military acting as guardians security of these states. In return, these States are to adjust their economic systems to meet U.S. economic interests and would also accept unilateral control of the United States on the instruments of "global governance" of the capitalist world (9). The United States has not used this system to corporatist economic interests, close to their own capitalists. They did not, for example, got their hands on goods in Germany and Japan when these countries were under their tenure on the contrary, they encouraged the survival of the capitalist class that had dominated these same states during war. They did not simply swept the old European empires. Undoubtedly, in the 1970s, American leaders had come to regret some of the concessions that were made to other capitalisms in the postwar period. Nevertheless, the political structure of the Cold War gave Washington considerable political weight to defend its economic interests. As shown by Robert Gilpin, the dependence of West Germany vis-avis the U.S. military and political support in the 1960s was essential for the United States may allow their companies to develop operations in the Federal Republic to become a major force within the European Economic Community (10). During the 1970s, American political supremacy enabled her to abandon the Bretton Woods system and impose direct rule of the dollar on the global economy, while managing the dollar as part of a policy only to defend the national interest of the United States. And in the late 1970s, faced with the strengthening of dangerous economic and political relations between Germany and the USSR, the decision of the United States, through NATO, to deploy Pershing missiles in the FRG was able to reach abrupt breakdown of these links between the FRG and the USSR. The political structure of the Cold War was less successful as a tool against Japan in the 1980s, partly because of the new relationship established in the 1970s between the U.S. and China. But it allowed the Reagan administration to switch to a new aggressive marketing policy, attacking vigorously in Japan and Southeast Asia, without any relation to the principles of GATT. "And the will of the Reagan administration to

end capital controls and liberalize financial markets was, as we have seen, fully legitimized by the anti-collectivist rhetoric that accorded with the anticommunism of the Cold War. We can identify three features of this political structure of the Cold War. First there was the fact that the elites of Western European states and Japan were directly dependent on im Rican decisions about the use of military power on which they had no control: the United States could take military initiatives against the Soviet Union or against enemies in the Middle East or elsewhere, initiatives with implications for the security of allies could be important if not vital, but these allies might not even be informed in advance. It was a way the military capacity of the United States could exert political influence over other deep general capitalist states. A second feature of the political structure of the Cold War was that the political supremacy of the United States was deeply rooted in populations of the countries allied with the penetration of anti communism in their national political institutions. Brzezinski has aptly compared the anti-political culture in a quasi-religious belief
(1

2). U.S.

governments were thus able to mobilize both their people and people from the rest of the Centre so united in declaring a state of emergency against Communism on different occasions during the Cold War. Military action and U.S. unilateral policies and measures were, at the popular level, a strong legitimacy in the mass political culture of anticommunism. And a third feature of this structure was the way politics between states within the Centre was institutionalized.Political relations, security relations between the U.S. and each of their subordinate allies were mainly organized on a bilateral relationship in a satellite center. European states, for example, do not combine in a European committee to determine a common line in international politics before negotiating with U.S. officials. And at the same time, disagreements on political issues between the allies and the United States should be run as a family through opaque institutions security agreements. In public, solidarity and harmony should be the rule.

This system was so well suited to the United States that successive governments did not feel the need to establish strong institutions and extended to the entire Center to manage the political economy of international policy in a way that ensures U.S. leadership . The IMF was relegated to a secondary role, mainly focused on economic management policies of the South in the 1970s. The organization that emerged with the task of coordinating and harmonizing public policies in the major capitalist countries - the OECD - has always remained a center of discussion rather than a political body authoritative. And the G7, developed in the 1970s, is never become a strong political organization and recognized. The United States have clearly used to implement the policies they had already decided unilaterally on some occasions and not give him little real collegiality otherwise. Within the structure of the Cold War, the U.S. had little need to exert their will on the international political economy, to develop institutional structures and have an authority .. Ad hoc arrangements to achieve their goals appeared to be sufficient.

The defeat of the Soviet bloc and the virtual triumph of American capitalism
The collapse of the Soviet bloc and the USSR was accompanied by an extraordinary wave of enthusiasm for transnational what could be described as the American model of "new capitalism calf", championed by the Reagan administration, supported by the Thatcher government in Britain and thematized in the 1990s as the "economic globalization". The campaign against the Soviet bloc during the "Cold War" was also a campaign for the new capitalist world capitalism. This campaign featured communism just as the worst and most extreme of a range of collectivism that rejected the free market "capitalism", through a variety of tatismes ranging from social democracy to the European to the statism of the South seeking to expand, through the "crony capitalism" statist in Southeast Asia. At the same time, we showed progress as the dismantling of labor law, privatization of industries and public services, the liberalization of national financial systems and, especially, the lifting of controls on the free movement of lafinance. In short, we advocated the internationalization of changes already made at national level in the Anglo-American world.

This program policy to Reagan fostered a transnational social movement with as much energy and considerable momentum (13). The most enthusiastic social groups were ca pitalistes Centre which naturally saw this as a package of new property rights that had been deleted after the Second World War and offered them now. But this movement appealed to the imagination of wider layers, which saw financial liberalization above all as the harbinger of a new modernization model born in the United States. We saw the considerable movement of speculative capital as signs of a new capitalist dynamism. It was felt that financial crises caused by the new capitalism were caused by resistance to the new statist capitalism. Financialisation and were perceived as being somehow related to a technological revolution that produce new engines of growth for the economies in new technologies and telecommunications. This program was adopted in the Reagan not only from the right in Europe, but by social democratic parties and groups of the nomenklatura in the former Soviet bloc. It has also spread to Latin America and parts of Asia. And this social movement was further encouraged when the U.S. boom of the 1990s and the stagnation of Japan and Europe were evident. The mistaken belief that the 1980 American supremacy was something of the past was replaced by the equally erroneous belief that the new American model of financial capitalism was to inaugurate a new era of U.S. dominance in the twenty-first century. In the late 1990s, this reading of the collapse of the Soviet bloc as the corollary of the triumph of the new capitalism was losing its influence in large parts of the world. You could see more and more uphill sudden speculative flows as symptoms of economic instability caused by the volatility of the international monetary system crazy. The neo-liberal form of capitalism turned out to be a formula for the enrichment of all small groups, at the cost of social and economic disruption for large groups or even whole societies. You could see more and more "economic globalization" as a war machine for the expansion of American capitalism, rather than a new model of international growth. And even the U.S., the new finance-capitalist model generated a dangerous speculative bubble in caeur economic boom.The end of the boom in 2001, accompanied by bankruptcies in the "new growth areas," seemed

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destined to mark the end of transnational social movement that hailed the dawn of a new epoch of capitalist dynamism.

III. The Eurasian regionalist challenge to global government of the United States and their geopolitical strategies during the last decade
Since the early 1990s witnessed the emergence of significant new challenges in the global domination of the United States at both ends of Eurasia. And the American state had to face these new challenges without the benefit of using solid political structures of the Cold War. In fact, these challenges are closely associated with the collapse of political structures themselves. Moreover, the instruments of the state apparatus of the United States are, in many ways, those inherited from fifty years of Cold War.

The new challenges

First, there is the growing trend of political regionalism in Western Europe, and simultaneous efforts to bring up in international relations a political identity European collective. Second, the shift of China and the former USSR, especially Russia, to capitalism, which raises the question of whether the U.S. can master these capitalisms to ensure the predominance of their relationship with American capitalism, rather than Russian ties with Germany and Western Europe, as well as links between China and the Pacific Rim. Such challenges have, of course, no official existence. The official discourse merely suggests that capitalism simply for economic units, regardless of nationality, who comply with international law of the contract as made by the GATT and other WTO institutions. Thus the challenges involved in cornering Chinese and Russian capitalism are reduced mainly to Russia and China, to put their economic policies in line with these market rules of the WTO. When this will happen, they will be allowed into the institutions of the global economy, and it is the most efficient producers out of any consideration of nationality, who will triumph in the field.

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But this official stance is far from consider issues of power related to the contemporary international political economy. These struggles involve West West for obtaining access to private markets gives a central role newly emerging, and in these battles, the GATT rules have little or no impact. During the 1990s, the West has bent over backwards to enter the rapidly expanding capitalism in East Asia and South East, including China, and also to gain advantages in the former Soviet Union. The processes by which the China of yesterday or today's Russia are trying to enter the WTO lead to rivalry and competition between the highly politicized Western powers about the conditions specific to assign to Chinese penetration . And apparatus of the WTO itself provides a wide range of cases and decisions, which determine in fact models of the network of international links which fits the Chinese economy. The United States have instruments of soft power - control of access to their markets and the IMF and WB, which are in themselves inadequate to settle these problems (14). Dependence with respect to the Chinese market for U.S. production is balanced by the urgent need for American capital for rapid insertion and vigorous in the U.S. market.And strong sales in China have given the U.S. a significant stranglehold on this country. Similarly, the important role played by Russia on international energy markets gave only a weak influence on the IMF and the WB on the Russian economy, and one of the decisive tasks of Washington in 1990s was to get a grip on debt by the Russian state by injecting the IMF money. We should not minimize either the fact that following the collapse of their political structures related to the Cold War, the United States found themselves deprived of any effective argument (soft power) on the political economies of two areas-belts. Washington had to quickly establish new institutional links with the countries of the European Union and we had to face obvious difficulties in efforts to put pressure on the Japanese government to accept that these sorts of trade agreements that Congress deemed necessary. Thus in the 1990s, the U.S. had to try to use their military-political capacity to forge political relationships both in the two areas-the-belt in Western Europe and the belt Pacific - and between these zones and belts of Russia and China. But this company to use its military

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capabilities for such remodeling has been a particularly difficult problem to solve for the United States in Europe during the 1990s, since the collapse of the Soviet bloc had destroyed the military-political structures clean the Cold War, which gave the U.S. military power his remarkable political efficacy.The emerging political power of China, its influence in East Asia, and its search for new political and economic links with East Asia and South East, have formed more and challenges most obvious for the military-political position of the United States in this region in the late 1990s. The main policy objectives of successive U.S. governments in the 1990s focused on issues of reorganizing the system of military-political influence tico to ensu effective political domination over Eurasia, and, by lmme, the dominance of American capitalism in the next century. Of course, with the end of the USSR, the United States military forces have become absolutely paramount. As many have noted, the U.S. could deal successfully with any other coalition of the largest military powers. This dominance has led to a military audience triumphalism evident among the realists in the academic establishment of American international relations: this perspective has been - well by Wolforth, Brzezinski and others. Kenneth Waltz, the great elder of neo-realistic, and the like, are skeptical that this should continue. They think that other powers will reset and change the balance to the detriment of the U.S. It. However, apart from the Chinese defensive rearmament, Waltz's prediction did not materialize. Military power on the United States today makes clear that it would be folly for any major power to seek to challenge the United States as a global military power. But this fact does not provide any response to other critical policy issues facing the world after the Cold War, for example, American military power can it prevent Western Europe to unite and form a power in world politics? American military power can it provide a unified Western Europe will not establish political links and economic ties with Russia on track towards a form of liberal democratic capitalism? The American military power - not to mention the soft power they have - can it ensure that Pacific Rim did not regionalized, and become a regional political economy at least partially protected? And what happens if, within a decade or two in the new

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century, Western Europe closely associated with Russia and Pacific Rim closely associated with China began to join forces in joint campaigns for the reconfiguration of international economic policy: U.S. military power can she successfully tackle this kind of challenge to the dominance of the dollar and the institutions of American soft power? As I tried to show in The Global Gamble, the main political challenges have dealt successive U.S. administrations since the early 1990s revolved around the new Eurasian issues, particularly around looking for an effective mentoring policy of "allies" of Western Europe and East Asia. To rephrase these intertwined challenges, we can say that this was nothing less than the transformation and reorganization of Eurasia: a huge change of scenery geo-social, geo political and geo-economic, of Eurasia. This is what became clear in the eyes of governments and intellectuals Americans. Yet this has not been central to the perception of U.S. policy in most Western European views. The picture in Britain of American political activity, for example, was largely that of a satisfied power, ruling over a world that had not changed much and behaving as if it was the usual routine: in other words, acting reactively to special cases, with discrete small chips here and there. Such an image is completely false. All U.S. administrations since Bush senior had vividly aware of their "presence in the (re-) creation": their focus is, in other words, consists of strategic and programmatic issues regarding the fundamental construction of a new international order and a new international economy. Interconnected areas and critical areas are: Western Europe, Central Europe and Russia, and Japan, the Pacific Rim and China. Caspian and Black Sea are also of great strategic importance. We will now focus our attention on some issues where U.S. global dominance is tested. 1. European transformations.

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2. Relations between Europe and Russia, and the role of Russia. 3. China, Japan and East Asia. 4. The Middle East. European Transformations The Reagan administration had achieved remarkable success in the 1980s by persuading the states of Western Europe to respond to the general crisis of Atlantic economies by an orientation towards neoliberalism. But the states of Western Europe had decided to plan this direction, particularly with regard to its consequences in terms of rising unemployment and marginalization that `significant minorities, by exploiting European integration , that is to say, using the very idea of European unity - a powerful idea for the European left as a vehicle of neo-liberalism (while presenting neoliberalism as a unifying factor for the Europe). This form of European orientation was in complete contrast to the neoliberal British government under Thatcher.Here, neo-liberalism was a genuine and serious business to transform the social basis of the state through an open confrontation with the British labor movement and its complete political defeat. On the other hand, in continental Europe, neoliberalism was intended from the pro-European co-optation of the labor movement and a gradualist strategy, under the sign of the construction of European unity. It was to prove fragile, full of ambiguities and evasions, above all the subterfuge of using a middle ground for European unity as a means to neo-liberalism, while simultaneously having this operation as its opposite : neo-liberalism as a means for a democratic federal Europe. The result was both the continuation of resistance to the neo-liberal from the world of work in France, Italy, Germany and elsewhere, and an increasingly popular legitimation lante luck of the European Union as a political , since this framework, in fact, was not at all transformed into a democratic federation. Therefore, in order to stay the course of the deployment neoliberal Europeanist, the executive powers of the West European states have begun increasingly to give the EU a new identity

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as an international organization ca agne for liberal rights of international and even glo, "democracy" and development and a host of other causes that attract the forces of left and center of Christian Democracy in Europe in areas that do not the crucial issue of neoliberal social relations of production: ecology, gender issues, issues related to children, racism, and an ever increasing human rights and development aid.The fragile coalition in favor of neo-liberalism was also supported by a strong protectionism and mercantilism willing not only to serve the interests of capitalism in Western Europe, but also to protect workers from the European Union in the industry competitive against imports from East Asia or Europe Central and Eastern Europe and the countries situated more or less at the periphery. At the same time, the modus operandi of the European Union dialogue, diplomacy prepared to produce diets based on processed both within the EU itself and in its international economic diplomacy, began to merge with its new political identity left liberal. States of the European Union began to seek to promote new areas of international L gislation of all kinds, from human rights to ecology, gender issues, etc.. (16). This effort to combine neoliberalism with the preservation of various class alliances in each country, between the capital, the workaday world and the intelligentsia of the left in Europe, through a new Europeanism, has created a source growing transatlantic tensions. Seen from the perspective of the new Europeanism, the U.S. militarists appear guilty of violations of the liberal principle, and, more generally, rather troopers against international legal standards or any standards. And with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the new Europeanism was combined with the interests and geopolitical strategies of the major states of Western Europe, particularly Germany and France. German unification in the context of a Soviet Union still in place inaugurated a period of intense exercises for all major Western powers between late 1989 and late 1991. This critical period emerged two cardinal political agenda in Germany: First tighten closer ties of Germany's neighbors with her, and it with them. Since the end of the Cold War, could no longer be content to do so only in terms of economic regionalism: it should be made in politics. But that could lead to a true federation it was therefore either a block or a European political dialogue, supporting the Eurozone. Secondly, Germany was determined to attract the belt states

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borders of Central Europe and Eastern Europe - states bordering Germany and Austria - firmly in close relationships, safe , friendly and cooperative ties with Germany, so they can play a protective role against all key German interests. But such an operation should be conducted within the framework of the European Union, not just bilaterally. At the same time, both countries were determined to achieve more strongly assert the interests of Europe within the Atlantic Alliance, and to confer a greater international profile in the European Union and Europeanism policy . Their geopolitical perfectly consistent with the policy of what we have called the new Europeanism. Despite the rhetoric French, French-German these guidelines were not at all year to face the American leadership on "the West". And indeed they came into conflict with the strong determination of the Bush administration to maintain the essential elements of American political control of European international politics, control the United States had exercised during the Cold War. This shows that Western Europe has presented two faces to American capitalism and the American state in the last two decades: on the one hand, more than any other part of the world, it has adapted its social relations and its state forms as a function of the overall American. More than any other part of the world, it opened at the entrance of American capital in the labor market and production market and later in its financial markets. Now part of the European Community is very favorable for U.S. companies producing even within this Community. Yet at the same time, the states of Western Europe are much closer to a kind of concerted coordination of capitalism, as a form of regional integration increasingly politicized. The United States thus faced a Europe rgionalisait and, simultaneously, was in sympathy with the neoliberal global, and the United States launched a European political challenge implicit in the political values and political influence international civil. American administrations that have succeeded during the 1990s had an essentially bipartisan approach their European problem. Their main objectives were three in number

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1. The first was to maintain the separation in terms militaropolitique between the major states of Western Europe, each remaining stuck in the center formed by Washington as the radius of a wheel to the hub. It was the old system of NATO: the Western Europeans were not allowed to sit as a group to coordinate their institutionalized political-military approach without Washington, then to share it collectively. There should be no military-political center of Western Europe independent (17) 2. The second objective, together with the previous, was able to block any Western European and collective self that reveals itself in the direction of Eastern (or Mediterranean), and prohibit all displays ment of a sphere of influence west -European from Germany to Russia. Through NATO, the United States were able to control any extension of power to the East, and somehow they played the role of border guards between Russia and the states of the European Union, now Russia out of institutional apparatuses European military-political. 3. Push States of Western Europe towards a resolute break - rather than against-heart - with the old alliance between capital and labor by introducing a labor market American-style minimalism of well-being of American style etc.., introduction to which successive U.S. administrations could rely on its British ally, either Major or Blair. As in English, such an effort to address the labor rights in Europe should have been done under the banner of a more harsh than the centrist Europeanism, and highlighted the banner - a right-wing nationalism, as in English - would undermine the coherence of the European bloc. These three objectives can be reduced to a single goal: to preserve the hegemony of U.S. control of the military-political order of Europe, in other words, a system of gears tightened applied to all significant issues of policy European and political relations of Europe with Russia and the Middle East. In short, it was to extend American hegemony over] Europe as they were carried during the Cold War. Thus in 1990 from France and Germany found themselves engaged in confrontations with the United States. These confrontations were not performed openly and therefore did not involve anything that could mobilize the masses to give their support to these various struggles. On the contrary, these struggles were practiced behind closed doors within

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NATO, EU and other institutions, and they were led through specific actions and attempts to "facts" in the military-political field and in the diplomatic field. But these were real struggles, and sometimes very intense. This was particularly the case for and against manceuvresmanceuvres in the Western Balkans. The Bosnian war broke out and continued largely as a by-product of these struggles West-West. The war between Serbia and NATO was first and foremost an American maneuver conducted within these struggles. And the English State, party to these conflicts sharply as a staunch pro-American, ended in the long run much closer to France and Germany. This shift in English, led by Blair in 1998, was largely the result of shock caused by the brutal contempt shown by the Americans and British European security in the Western Balkans, a contempt which was sometimes hair stand on end. This is how a European bloc has emerged gradually, despite the fierce hostility of the United States. The place was the emergence of this Pact European Defence and Security (ESDP) (18). It's not a very solid block, and it is far from being provided with means for effective and evident to develop and consolidate the practice: it merely makes the development of institutions. But on the other hand, the U.S. has managed to control the militarypolitical aspects of western expansion in the former Soviet bloc, they have been customers for security policy between Germany and Russia (Poland in the lead), and they managed to exclude Russia from institutions hosting debates and European political-military decisions. They gained a position gardesfrontires between Russia and Western Europe. As for the French efforts to ensure some coordination of the Mediterranean world in the framework of NATO, the Clinton administration reacted to them with a brutality diplomatic particularly aggressive, deforming the French proposal, the better to trample. So that the result of efforts undertaken by the United States to reshape the politics of Western Europe to maintain its effective control over the region under the conditions of the post-Cold War, is mixed, and this is potentially one of failure regarding the key point to prevent the emergence of a large block of West European politics.

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Relations between the U.S. and Russia

For the U.S. government in the 1990s, the difficulty was to keep both separated from Western Europe and Russia, and at the same time to remain the dominant influence on either side of the sepa ration. The effort to become the dominant influence in Russia has experienced outstanding results for a large part of the 1990s with the original policy conducted by the Clinton administration, that of a strategic partnership with the reform movement in Russia . While Bonn became a central partner of the Soviet government of Gorbachev, Washington quickly became the main partner of the Yeltsin team, pushing for confrontation with the Russian Parliament in 1993 and working closely with him to undermine and overthrow the powerful Russian Communist Party. As part of this political alliance, the U.S. Treasury established very close ties with Chubais clan, flooding it informally billion, and working with him nothing less than to reshape social relations specific to the economic Russian and building the new social oligarchy of Russian capitalism, in a narrow umbilical relationship with American capitalism (19). The device macroeconomic entire Russian economy was subordinated to and through this project, until the collapse of the ruble in 1998. The new social oligarchy seized much of the productive assets of the Russian economy, putting their wealth plundered, and benefiting from the high value of the ruble and the freedom of financial flows to circulate values of tens of billions of dollars to London and New York. At the same time, the association Chubais-United States ensured that the Russian government was paralyzed by a rapidly growing debt which absorbed a large part of the total budget in 1998. All this combined with the success of the Clinton administration to get the Yeltsin government's acceptance of NATO expansion to Poland in 1997, and to pursue an antiRussian course in this instance - a success remarkable political. Yet the Clinton administration proved incapable of carrying through this extraordinary project. Rapidly worldwide financial panic of 1998, the U.S. government was unable to prevent both the expensive collapse of the ruble as the denunciation of government debt by the Russian government. And very quickly the team Yeltsin and Chubais clan found themselves increasingly isolated politically, while the small number of emerging middle class, economically fragile pro-Western, had to face economic losses traumatic.

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The war waged by NATO against Yugoslavia in 1999 produced at the time a powerful and profound reversal of all elements of Russian public opinion against the United States. Ment even more seri, this led to the replacement of Yeltsin by Putin and by a shift in any political orientation of the Russian state, along the lines of the construction of an autonomous Russian capitalism and a revitalized Russian State . Upon the arrival of George W. Bush at the White House, American geopolitical efforts towards the Western Europe and Russia could hardly be presented as success. The two models that seemed to impose a new system of international politics in the region proved both ineffective. One was the old model of the Cold War, the United States taking the lead of a divided Europe against Russia. The other would put the U.S. position of "power neutral" between two mutually hostile entities: one Russian and one in Western Europe eastward expansion. Yet U.S. efforts have led to Western Europe tend to unite, while Russian policy became more and more strongly anti-American and began seeking closer ties with Western Europe , an approach warmly welcomed by the reciprocal of the part of some in Western Europe, particularly Germany. But the states of Western Europe continued to want to build their influence in international politics as a block. That's what they did in building their political diplomacy purely civil, and developing a mordant some against the United States. They replace the kind of political power by treaty regimes based on rules, and on a global scale, they emphasize the peaceful resolution of conflicts, they insist to demand systems based on the rules inherent in human rights etc.. They also call for a more collegial form of world government in which the U.S. could unilaterally decide all major issues. There were even indications of the interest of Europe towards an association with the states of East Asia against Washington, about some important issues, something that caused great trouble to the latter. So there in Western Europe a real movement, but still fragile and not very focused on the European Union, for cons-balance policy hegemonic power of the United States. It could be described as a subversive way to take the train.States of the European Union are striving always to avoid a confrontation face to face with the United States whenever it might

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initiate a conflict: they want to stay together while trolling, but at the same time they seek to highlight and affirm later points that differentiate them, and they apply also to respond to U.S. initiatives by measures to strengthen European cohesion. In 2001, political elites in Washington viewed these developments with a truly hostile eye. The Bush administration was determined to obtain the return of the states of Western Europe to a subordinate position, and to break the fragile existing block on the military and political.

The theater of the East Asian

While the year 1990 opened on the panic that seized the U.S. government and business circles with the dynamism of Japanese growth and positioning of increasingly assertive in international political economy, the Japanese challenge directly vanishes with the onset of breakup, and a long period of stagnation settled. The Clinton administration then found himself facing three major problems in the region: the continued dynamic growth in East Asia and South East with relatively closed financial systems and economic policies adjusted growth quick profit, the rise of China and its opening, and the increasing regionalization patterns of accumulation in the region, a regionalization which some currents within Japan and other parts of the area wanted to give form institutional. The Clinton administration encountered great difficulties in its policy towards China, seeking a first position in more confrontation with both China and North Korea, and then backtracking to the resistance and regional to pressure from American business community involved in the fight to obtain the Chinese market. But the East Asian crisis to the U.S. Treasury gave the opportunity to make a decisive breach opening the Korean economic policy and economic assets to the Korean American penetration, as well as progress in its efforts to open a route to Japan. These operations were associated line with a long-term U.S. policy, of acting as a "power neutral" overlooking the ancient political antagonisms between China, Japan and South Korea. But the U.S. Treasury operations during the 1997 crisis, although managing to cope with the Japanese countryside during the crisis to provide a regional solution,

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shocked the elites of the region and thus formed the basis of a more sustained effort of from ASEAN, China and Japan to work more aggressively to build an institutionalized regionalism. Taking steps to financial assistance provided to regional states to deal with currency crises or financial, constituted the first step in this direction. The second step is the agreement for the establishment of a free trade area including China and ASEAN and potentially extending to Japan and South Korea. This guidance makes clear how the old political antagonisms enter themselves in conflict as and as always are forged more links in the economic interests and the interests linked to political economy. The principal came against the current capacity of the United States, thanks to the global domination of the dollar, to manage huge trade deficits and to absorb so large export flows from third nance of East Asia East and Southeast.But the U.S. market declined rapidly with the onset of the recession in the U.S., thus reinforcing the current regionalist. While the strong rise of China creates tensions due to competition with South Korea and even Japan, however there are some very powerful interests throughout the region to institutionalize regionalization. This would give the states in the region a powerful argument vis--vis the United States to the extent that it provides some control over market access and regional production which frees the region of a direct dependence with respect IMF (and thus the U.S. Treasury) in a crisis. And it would get great benefits for society in so far as to allow about a more unified voice in international economic diplomacy in the WTO and elsewhere. In such circumstances, the Bush administration's policy of continuing in a role "power neutral" became out of context, while a stronger regional cooperation threatened helplessness. The fear was evident, for example, that the friendly policy of South Korea against North could lead to a consensual approach to reunification involving China and Russia and weakening American influence on this critical issue of regional policy. Thus, with the arrival of the Bush administration in Washington, the stage was set for an American movement actively working to rebuild the international political system in the Asia Pacific. The Bush administration

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has planned a change of direction, leaving his position as "neutral power" and up to a position whose motto is "contain China" American military power would then be deployed to generate a voltage with China and other powers to enlist in the region behind the U.S., thus achieving a bipolar structure. This would allow the U.S. to block the emergence of a political-economic regional bloc including China and Japan, as well as guide policy and regional economies in a more strongly pro-American interests. But under conditions where the Chinese economy continues to grow and offer extensive market openings to foreign capital, a policy to "contain" China can very easily lead to a re turn of the handle. The ability of the United States to provide political models, and therefore models of accumulation in the region, and is very far from assured. And there's yet another danger: that of political convergence between the U.S. and the countries of East and Southeast Asia, a number of issues of global political economy, and even on political issues in the region. This danger was prompted by the surprising approach of the United States for the South Korean friendly policy vis--vis the North, and in direct opposition to the line from Washington in early 2001.

The Middle East

The Middle East is another area where the U.S. government has deployed its combination, characteristic of the post-Cold War, tactical dynamism and laissez-faire. The political underpinnings of U.S. positions in the Middle East since the collapse of Soviet influence has been to manipulate the inveterate political conflicts within the region. Maintaining and supporting the Israeli power, they have made Israel a threat to other Arab states and were able to maintain a security relationship with Egypt. At the same time they were able to present themselves as the indispensable "mediators" between Israel and the Arab world regarding the occupation of Palestine. In the 1990s, they expanded the role of mediator in relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority regarding the occupied territories. And the U.S. have also played a role as protectors against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries to the threats to these States by Iran and Iraq.

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But after the triumph of the Gulf War and after the compromise ultimately unsustainable between Israel and Arafat establishing the alleged Palestinian Authority, the positions of the United States in the region enjoyed a long period of drift. Washington allowed the Saudis, as compensation to the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, to develop a stronger international political Islamist, whose consequences are visible with the rise of Al Qaeda. The Gulf War was itself followed by a siege war more barbaric against Iraq, killing over a million Iraqis as UN agencies, a policy per ceived more and more outrageous as the Arab world and the Islamic world. In addition, the eruption of the second Palestinian intifada ended the mediating role of the United States. She has brought to light the emptiness and unsustainability of the Oslo and Camp David, while the Israeli repression generated strong pressures in Saudi Arabia and Egypt so that governments show any influence on the crisis. Washington refused to come to the aid of these governments with respect to this matter: they retaliated by blocking U.S. efforts to renew their policy with regard to Iraq. The policy itself, in 2001, was completely routed, Syria and other states to help Iraq to break the blockade, the U.S. is politically powerless before the expulsion from Iraq of UN weapons inspectors responsible for investigating the weapons, the U.S. and Britain failing to develop a new policy accepted by the Security Council United Nations. September 11, U.S. policy in the region was adrift, and almost completely isolated internationally.

IV. The role of the United States as a global manager

If the geopolitical manceuvres United States in Europe and Eastern Asia rise to varying degrees of concern and even hostility of their "allies" transnational political agenda and interna tional - relating to The most important points of what might be called the Government overall remains largely alien to these questions. We will discuss about it two particularly important areas 1. The overall macroeconomic management; 2. Management issues in the South.

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The overall macroeconomic management

Despite the rhetoric regarding the existence of a new global capitalism and the emergence of institutions of "global governance", the results of this "global governance" in the 1990 borders on chaos. And despite the claims of U.S. officials to assert global leadership of the United States, behavior management overall has failed to say the least dignity. Whole story boils down to politicians intense rivalry between the capitalist states of the Center on major issues of global political economy. We witnessed the tensions that have continued to emerge in the WTO, the failure of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and other themes related to economic issues such as agreement Kyoto on the environment. All these tensions have emerged as the triad would have any advantage to present a united front to voters within the capitalist states of the Centre as to countries and peoples of the South. But these tensions have also arisen in the area of macroeconomic management overall. While the central banks of Europe cooperate daily with those of the United States and Japan to manage the international financial situation, and these links persist despite the rivalry between the capitalist powers of the Centre. But there is no consensus among them, whether the operation of the international monetary system or the regulation of international financial flows. The United States argued strongly their right to act unilaterally in their policy of supporting the dollar and exchange rates among major currencies, and have used their powers to abuse the exchange rate. Despite the threat imposed on systemic financial stability following the crisis in the countries of East Asia, the U.S. Treasury continues to oppose any attempt to make it less volatile international flows of hot money. The IMF, he resolutely reinforced this by behaving, in fact, as a kind of insurance for free public financial speculators North arbitrating at will the hot money. It could have envisaged a situation where these two problems would have been taken into account simultaneously, and where the dollar's dominance and the free movement of capital would have been preserved. The dollar could remain the dominant world currency as a unit of account and international trade while that the United States, the ECB and the Japanese authorities stabilized the exchange rate, and similarly, the free movement of private capital could be maintained

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while the country vulnerable to a sharp increase in financial portfolios could impose a substantial tax on financial flows in the short term. We could have prevented the IMF to protect the hot money speculators North by refusing to bail them out in crises and allowing governments not to honor their obligations to the debt. But successive U.S. governments have refused to take steps in this direction with the exception of minor adjustments in the provisions of the IMF. At present, the other G7 countries fail to agree on a new program management of monetary and financial organizations. It would however be possible develop a common position on some of these issues closer to East Asia and countries of the eurozone, as demonstrated in early 1999 the brief attempt of finance ministers of the German and French exchange rates, in agreement with the Japanese government. Cooperation in this field would certainly much easier if Europe extended to the east and if a monetary system emerged in East Asia.

Relations between capitalist states of Central and South management

Today as yesterday, the Southern States have great difficulty in confirming the authority of the state. Throughout the Cold War, the military machine and the system of U.S. intelligence have been actively involved in managing these problems in the South, including support for dictatorships, through participation in revolutionary movements againstand launching coups and military invasions. Simultaneously, in the 1970s, the capitalist states of the Centre faced a serious political problem in some developing countries: the reorganization of international economic policy that would have strengthened the role had South in the international division of labor. This campaign for a new international economic order was effectively extended to the 1980s by the way the Reagan administration managed the issue of debt, divided the South and set up the structural adjustment programs aimed at strengthen the social power of private capital in the South while bringing groups of local capitalists to become annuitants through the mechanism of free movement of capital that allowed them to make capital out of their country and placed them in

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the financial centers of London and New York, and linking them to American and British capitalism. Countries, especially East and Southeast Asia, which managed to avoid the debt trap and the destabilizing impact of DWSR (dollar-wall street plan) managed to keep clear of community in the South and continued to develop until the late 1990s. During the 1990s, the attitude of the United States towards the South has hardly changed, except to take a more militant turn. The United States continued to threaten to choke all the political forces that threatened international economic policy in place. The method used was similar to the seat of war: a combination of economic blockade sometimes accompanied by bombing campaigns aimed at destroying economic assets in the South and to terrorize and depleting their populations. The United States, in this context, also attempted to organize internal revolt to overthrow the governments fault. Simultaneously, various U.S. administrations have continued to defend the DWSR and allow the uncontrolled circulation of private capital without taking into account that this process continues to include extra dramatic financial crises that threaten to spread further, as shown in recent Argentine crisis and the serious problems now facing another flagship model of American politics: the Polish economy. These policies have not benefited from support from other capitalist states of the Centre. The Western European countries were initially welcomed the crisis in East and South-East Asia in 1997 because it allowed one to expect less competition from the region and also more open of these countries to capital Atlantic, but they then interpreted the crisis and its spread to the centers of capitalism as an expression of opposition to DWSR, they consider a global regime are solely the interests of American capitalism. Secondly, the structural adjustment programs of IMF and World Bank have not seriously challenged the international capitalist order in the South. The situation of the southern states has instead undermined found another way: with the collapse of legal and administrative structures of national and international, and social actors vast areas of the South and the former Soviet bloc from simply further legal and

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administrative instructions of the IMF / WB and forging closer economic and political institutional structures independently of the States: economic life and major centers of capital accumulation in the South are largely escaped the institutional frameworks state and interstate to work as part of the economy and try to capture some of the state apparatus to conduct their own ground. Social groups threatened by the ravages caused by the structural adjustment policies of the IMF / WB have supported this trend. And capital accumulation that results found no difficulty gateways already available to groups capitalist North, whether to exchange goods, to sell drugs, to find financial intermediaries, to the arms trade on a small scale or any other international transactions. In the 1990s, military tactics and policies of the United States towards the South have reinforced these trends, as well as the rest of the U.S. approach to economic regulation, be it financial or paradise tax. Europe has directly felt the impact of these policies: it is indeed the preferred destination of movements of people away from African countries failed and the countries of the former Soviet bloc and she also felt the effects of an infinity of other nuisances associated with the infernal machinery of DWSR, such as debt crises and so-called programs of "structural adjustment" of the IMF / WB that are in fact nothing other than destruction programs structural. The military machine of the United States represents an excellent means of coercion to solve a problem that does not really exist at present: an anti-capitalist left in a semi-peripheral countries with strong international support.Siege warfare, with its blockade intended to starve parts of the population, its bombing of the country's economic infrastructure, followed by financing and assistance in organizing an internal revolt, is an extremely powerful gear to combat progressive outbreaks in the South. But in the absence of such outbreaks, and when the real problem is the disintegration of the state, these instruments have absolutely no interest in the countries of Western Europe. These fires burned, probably for decades, the Western Balkans, which threatens the West of the great migrations, and gave birth to mafia states that have ties with the major economic centers of Western Europe.

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V. The Bush administration and the growing crisis of American leadership

During the 1990s, various U.S. administrations have continued to impose their priorities for international policy and other major capitalist powers have made each time the trailer United States instead of trying to counterbalance .Yet all these successive victories led an equally predictable negative consequences: they have failed to confirm their victories in establishing their political domination on new bases stable. In one case we could say that the United States have managed to strike a blow that could put away a long-term threat: one thinks of the efforts to control economic lamenace Japanese in the late 1980s, followed by effective measures to prevent Japan from establishing, in the 1990s, a protective cordon around its regional network of capital accumulation in East and Southeast Asia. But outside of that one success, the U.S. has accumulated victories that have never resulted in the production of a structure of domination stable. The triumph of the Gulf War in 1991 was derived at the regional level and resulted in the strategic paralysis of U.S. policy in the Middle East, the erosion of the blockade of Iraq in the late 1990s, the erosion of stability in Saudi Arabia and the erosion of the role of mediator of the United States in the endless process of Israeli-Palestinian peace. The triumph in Bosnia and in the war waged by NATO against Serbia caused a backlash in the form of a Security Policy and Defence European Union. The court provision ally designed to Milosevic led to the creation of the International Court of Justice. The stunning success of the U.S. Treasury in its strategic partnership with the "Russian Reform" and the power is dependent on Russia through the debt was followed by the collapse of the ruble and the denunciation of the Russian debt under the effect of the crisis in East Asia. The crisis in East Asia itself has triggered the opening of the triumphant South Korean economy and the failure of regionalist initiatives taken by Japan, but all this has served only to strengthen efforts regionalization of economic and political ties in the East and Southeast Asia. Efforts to build a European political system led by the United States and focused on NATO, excluding Russia through the war against Serbia, have not resolved the Russian question. Instead, they opened the way to the leadership of Putin in Russia, marked by a

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strong desire to revitalize the Russian state and breaking down new barriers between the Russian and European political systems, which will launch in Europe West positive reactions and resulted in something very like a rivalry Germany / United States to establish links with Russia. Policy toward China was also marked by the absence of any strategic progress. Joseph Nye said that in the early 1990s, today gives the measure of American failure. He stated in effect that the combination of what he called soft power and hard power of the United States would succeed in transforming the environment of other States so that they come to spontaneously align their desires of those of the United States.This was indeed the situation in effect for much of the Cold War. But during the 1990s, this became less and less true, and while some states have played the game the United States and acted as the United States wanted, they did so with an increasing reluctance. Nye gave us another clue in predicting that the indirect influence [soft] U.S. become increasingly effective, while its direct power [hard], that is to say military would play a role less and less important. At the time, this prediction appeared likely. The American model of capitalism seemed to triumph, it generated enthusiasm and was a model of growth in many countries. The IMF had no more than to structural adjustment as the only path to a bright future of casino capitalism where capital flows surfing floating exchange rates did figure new wave of capitalist modernization.Prospects, which seemed so promising in early 1990 to develop the authority and the institutionalization of international organizations led by the United States, as the Security Council United Nations, IMF and World Bank, and later the WTO, have not materialized. The ability of indirect influence [soft power] has virtually disappeared and the enthusiasm for American power outside the United States now seems limited to small groups of extremely wealthy people who consider the U.S. as ultimate defenders of their private interests. The natural tendency, in this context seems to be the erosion of international regimes under U.S. influence with states still trailing the United States but showing signs of subversion believe components, with initiatives of regionalization taking the magnitude , and states reacting

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to the situation of vulnerability created by the DWSR improvising more and more individual measures to limit the risks associated with the movement of hot money. The end of the U.S. boom can only reinforce this trend gradually weaken as the centripetal forces of the United States.

The problem of legitimacy: the disintegration of the overall policy of the masses of the United States
The international activities of the American state during the Cold War have greatly benefited from the fact that the U.S. was perceived by a large proportion of the electorate of other capitalist states of the Centre as the true protector and leader of the democratic world Liberal against communism. What U.S. presidents were popular or not in Europe and the Pacific, the world leader of the United States was accepted by all populations. Added to this was a real sense of collective identity as a "West" united against the communist enemy. No doubt this feeling of common identity was he particularly shared by the bourgeoisie who remembered the war of 1940 and remained grateful to the U.S. state for defending its interests in every sense of the term. But the approval of the United States extended far beyond the social sectors of the electorate-Democrats of the capitalist countries. In this context, military campaigns and U.S. support for dictatorships were justified by the need to vigorously defend the liberal democratic world against the Soviet threat that criticism and demonstrations of unilateral power of the United States against its own allies remained largely under wraps, with the sole exception of vehement criticism of French President de Gaulle, a European political leader who had been trained before the installation of U.S. hegemony after the war. Yet the world of post-war, there is a weakening of the U.S. recognition as a natural leader of the West, and the unconditional acceptance of unilateral measures eral of the United States against other capitalist states and the Centre manceuvres United States to multilateral organizations like the IMF, NATO and the GATT.

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These legitimacy problems are partly explained by how the Clinton administration, and also that the first Bush administration, have tried to legitimize Western expansionism and American post cold war by passing to the global triumph of liberalism. This attitude resulted in the Atlantic world enthusiasm for new projects ambitious "global governance" liberal, cosmopolitan citizens' rights and behavior of Western states resolutely focused on liberal principles - trends that were soon to be in conflict with the international behavior of real United States. But these problems of legitimacy must also be supplied by another source: the conscious efforts of other capitalist states of the Centre, particularly in Western Europe, to use standardized liberalism as a political tool to limit the ability of U.S. to fi liberal principles and rules of international institutions.Under such conditions, the reference to anti-communist common values could no longer be current. Various political analysts and U.S. officials seem to believe that the lack of popular legitimacy relatively reliable, internationally, of the foreign policy of the United States is irrelevant because the masses do not count in international politics. If they actually believe what they say, they are largely in error. During the 1990s, the political masses certainly has not taken center stage. There is no popular revolutions, but only riots and revolts throughout the world, who were supported by no organization, no program, no strategy. But in the long run, a power that tries to dominate world politics without being able to ensure the political loyalty of a substantial part of the world outside his own electorate is likely to encounter serious problems. It will be in trouble, and often taken by surprise, not only by the mass movements arrayed against it but also by states capable of mobilizing international support to resist the power games of the United States. It seems that in the foreseeable future the United States are trapped in capitalism and a political system unable to generate an internal foreign policy may pirer ins to support major social movements in other parts of world. His only international support, certainly enthusiastic but less and less influential, now appears to be the group of superrich and a mishmash of various authoritarian, conservative Christian fanatics and free trade. Outside these groups, support the international role of the

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United States seems almost reduced to a hard-instrumentalism: use the U.S. if possible and follow when you can not do otherwise.

VI. Conclusions: assumptions for the future development and future of the left
It seems that there are two main options for future developments over the next decade: Successful efforts of an enemy that requires steady military confrontation with the United States and causing a new rift global evidence to support U.S. political supremacy. A continuous sliding, punctuated by the power games of the United States, in a context of international disintegration and chaos increased.

The United States are moving towards centralization of military power and to search for a new global political cleavage
Faced with the failure of this quest for a new structural basis of American supremacy, first Clinton administration and now a very open way the Bush administration tried to move the center of world politics more strongly to the field of American force: military power. Washington seeks to overcome the constraints posed by a series of arms control agreements already in place or nearing completion: the anti-ballistic ABM Treaty, the Protocol on biological ar my, the treaty banning all nuclear testing, the Convention on small arms, the treaty banning landmines. The common message in all these areas is that other states should not be able to seek safety in the international arms control, but only by seeking the support of American power. The most significant aspect of this political axis is, by far, the effort to discard the ABM treaty and to develop the missile defense (NMD). This will give Washington in the perspective of attacking aggressively nuclear powers, and yet again to subordinate the other capitalist powers to dominate American politics. These will take effect in the following choice: either they are placed under the protection of anti-missile shield and become addicted if the U.S. have attacked nuclear powers like

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China, or they actually leave the system military alliance of the United States and they are preparing a future of military insecurity and political exclusion. The Bush administration is also seeking a way to find a more stable global political cleavage around which it could indoctrinate allies in a campaign of international politics in the longer-term. On assuming office, she seemed to have chosen the theme of a campaign to divide "contain China", focused on North Korea and Taiwan as key points of confrontation. But Sept. 11 has focused the search for a stable cleavage a "war against terrorism" to be conducted by a "coalition against terrorism" led by the United States. In the context of the war in Afghanistan, asked the states to decide on participation in this coalition. They accept, they find themselves supporting a military and political campaign on which they have neither control nor significant influence on the choice of targets in the coalition or the methods used to combat these targets. This coalition does not have a collective forum for policy development: it is simply an extreme form of an alliance between America and its satellites, where each state tries to talk bilaterally with the United States while they decide. And this anti-terrorist coalition combines military instruments, instruments of intelligence, and a common discipline in diplomacy and in international organizations like the UN. Organizations like NATO are marginalized for some time. States that refuse to join the coalition against terrorism are under threat of hostile action by the United States. By defining the new cleavage as a war against terrorism, the Bush administration avoids any substantive definition of the enemy: terrorism can refer to any state or armed group that demonstrated hostility against United States. At the same time, this campaign may appeal to many Southern states who are facing discounts in domestic causes: these states can get support in their efforts to crush opposition at home. The attack of September 11 offers a popular base for this campaign by showing that there is a genuine, existential, from armed groups in the Middle East. The hostility of most of the population of the Arab world and many people in Muslim countries against U.S. policy visa-vis Israel, Iraq, and other issues in the Middle East provides an additional basis to

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mobilize the support of people in the Western world for the anti-terrorist coalition. Washington can use this new polarization to restructure Western liberalism and produce a new political base for the right. Instead of liberal universalist and pacify the world by applying the rules liberal to all, including the United States and the Western world, liberalism can reposition itself as the institutional order of the West faces an attack from d a non-liberal world. Thus, as during the Cold War, facing the threat anti-liberal, the United States or other Western powers can use the defense of liberalism to justify all kinds of anti-liberalism. On this basis, the attempt to CPUE be defined as the center of an international liberalism against the principles set by the political power of the United States can be overcome. And right, a defense policy of "Western civilization" can develop, in conjunction with the C ULTURAL conservatism and "traditional values Western". However, the prospects offered by the use of anti-terrorist coalition to restructure world politics do not seem promising. The campaign has a very powerful popular support in the U.S., but for.-it works globally, the United States should intensify their military action in the Middle East in a way that would cause much more serious threat to the Western Europe and other allied centers, in order to provide a strong political form to American supremacy. And efforts in this direction could just as easily cause a backlash against American militarism, the U.S. and their allies, that produce a new unit. And this campaign does not take into account the major changes and new links across Eurasia we have discussed above.

Continuous slip
This seems to be the most likely scenario, the United States constantly looking for new ad hoc campaigns here and there to establish their control over world politics, but still unable to use such victories for a sustainable strengthening of their supremacy to achieve something that looks like a new world order. More likely, however, that the U.S. end up making a blunder that other nations will want to take full advantage, making it necessary for the United States to redouble their efforts to a new point triumph to demonstrate again their supremacy. However,

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social disintegration progresses in the South, and other capitalist centers increasingly seek safety at a regional level.

The outlook for the left

The coalition that included in the 1990 Liberals and Social Democrats in their efforts deployed to persuade the U.S. government to defend their values globally decays. They now have a choice between, on one hand, to join American supremacy no matter what happens and, secondly, to rethink their programs and actions to reform the world. In the latter case, it is necessary that the left with such currents to look at some important realities. The main challenge posed to the world today is the increased degradation and poverty faced by most of humanity in the South. Believe that these problems will be solved by private companies responding to market signals and profit-seeking, it is building castles in Spain. Free trade for developing countries, even if the powers that dominate the WTO agreed, does not suffice to bring these countries to growth. Help is very inadequate for development; the debt cancellation would help but would be insufficient. Only a new settlement north-south in a whole new development for the integration of Southern economies in the global economy may begin to resolve these problems. In all these areas, the results of the EU is not one iota better than the United States, and in some ways it is worse. The anti-globalization movement is essential for left-liberals and social democrats. At the same time, we must resist attempts to impose political economies of South regimes suitable for capitalist states of the Centre, including the WTO regime and the conditions of the IMF and World Bank, and the convertibility currency current accounts and capital, and must promote pluralism and complete systems of economic regulations. We must resist the program increasingly in vogue which consists of political and military interventions in the South to overwrite unpleasant regimes for liberalism to build, duly prten, more civilized state, and we must call it by its name: a new liberal imperialism. In practice, this program is really nothing but a banner displayed to legitimize the policy of Western powers, whether in the case of Iraqi Kurds, the peoples of the Western Balkans, or the Afghan people.Preservation of the sovereign

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equality of States, and resistance to power games of the West that destabilize or destroy the peripheral states can lay the foundation for a genuine social and political development. And the latter can be achieved by the clash between social and political forces within states in an international political and economic course. A systematic struggle against the new militarism, whose center is currently the United States, a task is increasingly important to be added to the program of the movement against capitalist globalization. In the campaign against neo-liberalism, use the English case as an example of what neo-liberalism leads to the collapse of public services, social polarization, rebellions and riots in cities impoverished North the endless scandals, and the spread of corruption. Strengthen ties between the American left and the left in other parts of the world is a more important task than ever.

Note
* Franoise Armengaud translated the point III, Fabrice Bensimon points 1, II and VI and Nanon Gardin points IV and V. Thierry Labica kindly ensure the revision of the translation of some text. 1) See Peter Gowan, "neoliberal Cosmopolitanism," New Lefr Review 11, September-October 2001.

2) For a review of different theories of the debate on "globalization", see Ronan Palan, J. Abbott and P. Deans, State Strategies in the Global Political Economy (Pinter, 1996). 3) For a brief summary of Cox's position, see Robert Cox, "Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory" in Robert O. Keohane (ed.),Neorealism and Its Critics (Columbia University Press, 1986). See also: Kees van der Pijl, The Making of year Atlantic Ruling Class (Verso, 1984), and Transnational Classes and International Relations (Routledge, 1998).

4) For further discussion of this trend, see Peter Gowan, The Global Gamble (Verso, 1999)

5) Alan Rugman, The Endo of Globalization. Why Global Strategy is a Myth & How To Profit from Realities of Regional Markets (AMACOM, March 2001) 6) For a fuller discussion of the issue, see Peter Gowan, "Europe" and East Asia ", paper at the conference" Europe and Asia "Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea, September 21, 2001. 7) On the attempts to build strong levels of cooperation, see Craig Murphy, International Organization and Industrial Change, (Cambridge, 1994).

8) In the case of Britain, see Andrew Baker, "Nebula and the Internationalization of the State in the UK? The Case of Mr. H. Treasury and the Bank of England, "Review of International Political Economy, 6, 1, Spring 1997, p. 79-100.

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9) The standard analysis of this process is: Samuel Huntington, "Transnational Organizations in World Politics," World Politics, Vol. XXV, April 1973. 10) Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations, Princeton University Press, 1987. 11) See Miles Kahler, International Institutions and The Political Economy of Integration (The Brookings Institution, 1995) and Jeffrey Frankel and Miles Kahler (eds.), Regionalism and Rivalry: Japan and the U.S. in Pacific Asia (University of Chicago Press, 1993 ). 12) Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard (Basic Books, 1997). 13) See Peter Gowan, "Globalization: Process or Policy?" Communication "Colloquium on Globalization," Center for Social Theory and Comparative History, UCLA, June 4, 2001. 14) On the concept of "soft power", cf., Nye, J., Bound to Lead, Basic Books, 1989.

15) These debates are more widely discussed in Wolforth WC, "The Stability of a Unipolar World," International Security, vol. 24, No. 1, Summer 1999, and Rodman, PW, Uneasy Giant, Nixon Center, M0 *. 16) See, Gowan, P., "The EU's Human Rights Diplomacy", Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, 69, Fall 2001. 17) Concern that the document was at the heart of national security for the Bush administration drafted by Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby. For further developments on these issues, cf., Gowan, P., The Twisted Road to Kosovo (Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, 1999), and also, Cornish, P., Partnership in Crisis (Royal Institute for InternationalAffairs), in 1997. 18) Menon, A., "Playing with Fire: The EU's Defence Policy", paper presented at the seminar "Does the PETS make sense?", London European Research Centre, University of North London, October 25, 2001. 19) Wedel, J., Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe from 1989 to 1998, St. Martin Press, 1998.

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