Although little known in Britain, Charles Krauthammer (pictured) is probably America’s number one commentator on foreign policy. He’s got a Pulitzer prize to his name, he’s a regular talking head on Fox News, and his Washington Post column is syndicated in nearly 200 other newspapers.
Politically, he is very much on the right. He is said to be closer to neoconservatism than any other ideological tendency, although not uncritically so. But although he really should invest in some better hair dye, he is clearly a highly intelligent man who analyses the world through the eyes of the US ruling class.
One of his best-known ideas is the concept of ‘the unipolar moment’, the title of an article he wrote for the journal Foreign Affairs in the early 1990s. Krauthammer argued that with the demise of the USSR, the US would for perhaps three or four decades stand out as the world’s sole superpower.
This idea has achieved widespread currency. Vladimir Putin uses it his speeches, although his only disagreement with unipolarity is that Russia is not the unipole, while the word crops up in articles by leading British Marxists such as Alex Callinicos.
Throughout much of the 1990s and 2000s, unipolarity appeared pretty much a straightforward description of an international reality that has led some on the left to become sympathetic to anything and everything seen as undermining US hegemony.
Never mind that the class base of political Islamism is almost always bourgeois and very often antithetical to democracy; it’s a challenge to unipolarity, comrade. But in the final analysis, Islamism – even in the guise of a nuclear-armed Iran – can only represent an asymmetrical irritant to imperialism. The only real competition for a superpower state is another superpower state.
Now we might be getting just that, in the shape of the re-emergent nationalist Russia so evident in Georgia in recent days. It represents, in the words of Seumas Milne, ‘the return of some counterweight’.
Yet as with all paradigms developed by bourgeois social science, unipolarity and multipolarity - the antonym buzzword - need to be handled with care. Because revolutionary socialists are implacably opposed to US imperialism, it does not follow that we are therefore indifferent to what undermines it.
That should be especially the case for those that claim to stand in the tradition of socialism from below. Our desire is for the self-organised working class to challenge the global rule of capital; our attitude to other agencies that inconvenience or cut across the plans of our ruling class is purely tactical.
Russia’s foreign policy is a case in point. As an orthodox Trotskyist student in the 1980s, I used to argue that Moscow’s support for what the entire left then refered to as national liberation struggles was objectively progressive.
No one then could have know what a bunch of corrupt petrocrats the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola would turn out to be, but that is beside the point.
It is now possibly to see Russia’s involvement in Africa for what it was, namely the pursuit of geostrategic self-interest; I don’t think its intervention in the Caucasus deserves any different description.
Now of course, nothing the internationalist left does or thinks right now has no impact on global politics. If Russia or China become strong enough to challenge unipolarity in the next period, all we can do as Marxists is analyse the process and take an attitude accordingly.
The question is, should the left necessarily have a preference for multipolarity per se over unipolarity? Is it somehow intrinsically healthier? Does the flavour in which the ‘counterweight’ comes count for anything, or does it just have to be a good thing, however you slice it?
Swathes of the left seem to see international relations as a sort of zero sum game. Putin’s triumph is supposed to mean that a reified ‘American imperialism’ has suffered a setback and been weakened accordingly. Well, maybe. But offset against that, the resultant nationalist fervour that this is going to generate will make things a lot harder for Russia’s small groups of genuine socialists.
In short, there is nothing about the television pictures of Russian tanks rolling over another country’s border and shooting up Gori that particularly gladdens my heart.
So is it simply that my old far left reflexes have atrophied, or has our application of historical materialism really deteriorated to the level of ‘it’s always in our favour when the yanks get a bloody good kicking’?
Posted at 13:00, 15 August 2008
Comments (33)
Interesting post, Dave. I'd never heard of 'unipolarity' before, it doesn't crop up much in 'Woman's Weekly', but it sounds like the sort of nonsense concept that bourgoise political scientists would come up with. Just a few things that have been niggling me. The Oil Sheiks are investing more and more money in Europe, because the logic of capitalism is that capital has to be exported when you have got a lot of it, does that mean that the Arab nations are imperialist, in the classical sense? I wasn't particularly active in the Anti-Apartheid Movement when I was a young 'un, and I'm glad I wasn't now. I think I would be brokenhearted at what has happened in Zimbabwe. South Africa may or may not go the same way. I hope not for the Africans sake. The problem is that some people, usually with comfortable homes and lots of money in the bank, love to feel Schadenfreude, especially about America. I don't think America can guanantee world freedom or peace, and I am sometimes gob-smaked at their crassness ie waterboarding, ill-treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, but it's a problem of geo-political realities. Anyone would behave like that who was defending that position. Unfortunately, we don't like the position that America is defending.
David: do you really live among people whose hearts are gladdened by the strength of the Russian retaliation against Georgia? Do you really see this in Left-leaning blogs during the last week? This would appear to be what you are saying here, and in a previous post, but I'm not sure about this. I've read a lot of analysis in the last week on Left-leaning blogs (and through the links from these) and most of these point out that the USA administration has, particularly since 2001, been making assumptions that have turned out to be incorrect (and the UK has been going along with these assumptions). Now there are some people in main-stream politics and media who seem to assume these commentators are pleased that unipolarity has ended: I'm not sure that they are. They are pointing out that unipolarity was always a big assumption and was quite likely to come to an end because Russia, China, Iran and others don't like nations from the other end of the world poking around their neighbourhoods. (Richard Seymour says very clearly that he thinks that the world has got more dangerous, but that doesn't seem to stop others from suggesting that he is pleased because "Putin wins").
I think that it is the job of the Left to question assumptions (including the Left's assumptions) but that is difficult because some of these assumptions are deeply embedded in main-stream politics. There was an example of this on Crooked Timber a couple of days ago: there was an interesting discussion about the Democratic Peace theory and then someone came along and asked why the Left is hostile to this theory. This person interpreted the questioning of theory as hostility. They then went on to say that the Democratic Peace theory is comforting "so why is the Left hostile to it?" Many assumptions are comforting, which is the danger: when someone questions them it is interpreted as hostility because the comfort blanket risks being taken away. Watch what happens if someone says that there is likely to be much less oil on the market in a few years time: "you Greens want people to be poor".
I agree with you that multi-polarity can be just as dangerous as unipolarity. The unipolar moment led some in the West to think that international law was irrelevant. The sudden realisation that the world isn't uniploar may lead to going back to international frameworks for managing conflict, or it may lead to increasing friction. We don't know and we don't have that much influence but we should keep on questioning the assumptions.
The question is, should the left necessarily have a preference for multipolarity per se over unipolarity? Is it somehow intrinsically healthier? Does the flavour in which the ‘counterweight’ comes count for anything, or does it just have to be a good thing, however you slice it?
What a refreshing question. On the theme of questioning assumptions, one that passes frequently without comment is the one that suggests the world became a more dangerous place since 1989. The reality is that the world has become significantly less violent since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Another one that could do with asking is, how much of a change does this represent? I'd argue not much. Perhaps the period from 1989 to the present should be seen as an aberration where Russia was too weak to assert its usual control over its 'backyard'. Russia's behaviour is simply a return to historical type. I wouldn't blame anyone for dismissing what I say as Kissingeresque - it's just that I don't think the world was ever so 'unipolar' that membership of NATO, or the EU, would have been able to provide Georgia with what they expected from it. I don't agree with those who say this episode shows the limit of American power in the sense that I think this limitation should have been obvious already. Despite their blusterings, the Americans understand this perfectly well, I think - which is why they have ruled out unequivocally any military option. The significance of this has been overlooked? They certainly haven't done this in relation to Iran, for example.
It should go without saying that this doesn't mean the present situation is desirable. Maybe we're seeing another limitation to the one usually mentioned: the limit of American power, certainly - but it also shows the limits of nationalism. There has never been an international order that has shown itself able to preserve the integrity of small states, we don't have one now, and there doesn't look like there's going to be one any time soon.
Swathes of the left seem to see international relations as a sort of zero sum game.
They see, despite the evidence, the US as being practically omnipotent, and entirely malevolent, and are therefore not so secretly pleased when something happens that shows them this is not so. Personally I think they'd have an easier time of it if they took a more realistic view of America's position in the world in the first place. It is, for example, only an ahistorical imagination that could come up with the idea that Russia's behaviour is only explicable in relation to the presence of the United States.
Great post. I had only emailed a Comrade recently about this very subject. He seemed to be tacitly supporting the Russian invasion on the basis that it was a percieved defeat for the US. Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union there still seems to be some hankering for a rise of Russia on the left even though the modern rulers of Russia are far removed from Marxist-Leninst teachings.
Dave
Are you saying that we have to stop cheering when Cuban boxers wallop Americans at the Olympics?
That's political correctness gone mad.
'Because revolutionary socialists are implacably opposed to US imperialism, it does not follow that we are therefore indifferent to what undermines it.'
The problem is Dave that I am not convinced that you are actually 'implacably opposed to US imperialism'.
You seem to think that Russian imperialism is somehow worse than US or UK Imperialism and so we should be worried if a client state of the US gets a kicking. But Putins crimes in Chechnya are nothing compared to US or UK crimes in Iraq or Afghanistan.
All that most people on the Left are saying is that what this current conflict illustrates is that inter-imperialist rivalry is not a thing of the past but very much a thing of the present, given the attempt by the American Empire to take advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union and build a 'New World Order' that can dominate the world in its place.
The world has become a more dangerous place now because the US empire after trying to expand its domination now has a bloody nose. It might try to get revenge elsewhere for this - perhaps look again at Iran.
The task for the British Left is to actually try and stop such future wars by further weakening the ability of the American war machine to fight future wars by breaking Britain away from its grip. You see Britain is not neutral in all of this as your post suggests. New Labour have turned Britain into the Airstrip One of the American Empire. Our task is to build up the Stop the War movement (you still don't link to the stop the war coalition website do you?) and so fight the imperialist war machine that way.
What was that old slogan of the revolutionary socialist Karl Liebknecht again? 'The Main Enemy Is At Home'. Too right. The task of socialists whereever they are is first of all to oppose the warmongering and imperialism of their own ruling classes - and actually 'To Turn Imperialist War into Civil War'.
But if your blog actually said any of that, you would be expelled from New Labour. So much for your 'revolutionary socialism'.
`But Putins crimes in Chechnya are nothing compared to US or UK crimes in Iraq or Afghanistan.'
That's a joke right?
On the main question. Lenin said that ultr-imperialism was ultra-nonsense. So I think that uni-polar moment was bound to be fleeting to say the least. One of the reasons he said there would not be an ultra imperialism, apart from the impossibility of transcending the political and economic interests that divide the imperialists, was that it would make too tempting a prize for the world proletariat. It would have been good if, like the Roman empire, a unipolar world had rotted from within and fallen relatively easily to the next stage of human development but it was never to be. A multi-polar world will be a very dangerous place in which the major powers will clash directly unlike in a bi-polar world where they fight only proxy wars (dangerous enough for the victims of those). However, wars are usually ended or followed by revolution so fasten your seatbelts and let's go. The epoch of war and revolution is back on.
Perhaps I should qualify the last statement a little.
Of course, during the bi-polar Cold War there was an ultra-imperialism of sorts united in its opposition to the Soviet Union. If the Stalinists had not collapsed the Soviet Union then it is certain that the West would eventually have fallen to socialism. This was the main driver behind the neo-liberal assault and Reagan's cranking up of the Cold War with ever more beligerent statements about the `evil empire' and his `accidentaly' being heard to say `we start bombing tonight'.
Snowball: The beautiful slogan of `the main enemy is at home' becomes in your hands an opportunist excuse to turn a blind eye to the destruction being wrought by Russian imperialism in Georgia.
However, wars are usually ended or followed by revolution so fasten your seatbelts and let's go
Defeat in wars are often followed by revolutions - or other forms of regime change. Given that there isn't any realistic prospect of them losing, this would be one reason - if there weren't enough already - why Russia's behaviour should be seen as completely undesirable from anyone from a left tradition, surely?
`Russia's behaviour should be seen as completely undesirable from anyone from a left tradition, surely?'
It is by me Shuggy.
Snowball - do you really think that a civil war is such a good idea? I was just reading about the War in Yugoslavia where (one small atrocity amongst many) 20-30 elderly people who couldn't flee from their village in time were rounded up, tortured (some had their eyes gouged out, some had their limbs broken) and were then thrown (most of them still alive) off a cliff one by one. I don't know about you but I tend to think that stuff like that is a Bad Thing. I tend to think that I don't want that to happen to people that I love.
And that sort of thing is absolutely inevitable in a civil war (along with mass rape, disease and malnutrition/starvation and a host of other day to day injustices and atrocities on a mass scale).
So while I agree with you that the task of the Left has to be to oppose the imperial designs of its own ruling class, I think that the slogan 'turn the imperialist war into a civil war' is politically (and morally) stupid. I mean you're not going to win mass support are you, by saying to the man and woman in the street 'Well what we need is a civil war (where your elderly parents may be thrown into a ravine, where your kids may be raped and mutilated and where you may end up in a mass grave) - yes that's definitely a good idea isn't it'. Or perhaps the revolutionary civil war will be a nice one where it's all exciting red flag waving at the barricades and posing for the cameras in berets and ammunition belts (and I suspect that that's all very much a young man's kind of fantasy - there's no room for the old or the very young in such high japes - they're just background non-people in all of this, or occasionally corpses in the background but otherwise unimportant) but where it's only really bad people that get hurt and all the goodies who die die in very heroic and romantic ways and not screaming or crying or trying to scoop their intestines back into their body and where there are aren't dozens and dozens of pits full of piles of rotting bodies.
We know all of this is happening abroad. We know that Imperialist war causes this sort of misery. But it's also a fair guess that the average Joe isn't stupid and doesn't really want to see it happen to his or her family and friends in his or her city or town.
Very well put Ed.
I agree with you.
But I'm always left wondering how do we be nice and still win? When they will always be brutal.
Not wanting to be rude, but would you really, really 'trust' an SWPer with anything other than a blunt butter knife? let alone an AK47?
they'd probably shoot half of Respect Renewal before you could say "Galloway" in another spate
I'll bet many a SWPer fancies himself as Felix Dzerzhinsky?
nowadays they're a pile of toy-town Lenins who couldn't see Galloway coming, never mind out-wit him
Capitalists sleep soundly in their beds knowing that the SWP is "organizing" things, as they have for 30+ years, whilst getting smaller and smaller, and less and less relevant to the working classes, the SWP couldn't find sand on a beach if the revolution depended on it
`But Putins crimes in Chechnya are nothing compared to US or UK crimes in Iraq or Afghanistan.'
That's a joke right?
What, Russia killed a million or so civilians in Chechnya?
the modern rulers of Russia are far removed from Marxist-Leninst teachings
Politically-theoretically quite possibly (though a commentator on German state radio was talking about "Putin's communism" the other day with regard to Georgia). But organisationally certainly not. A bit like China or Vietnam (and Cuba), I suppose...
Can I just say, in case there was any doubt, that I would side with Snowball against Modernity any day.
Miles - I don't know the answer to your question. In a situation where the capitalist order was tottering and a socialist alternative really on the cards there would no doubt be a high probability of violence. I don't think anyone can seriously see capital simply being reformed calmly and gradually out of existence. Nevertheless, effectively calling for a civil war strikes me as: a). (in today's political climate - we are not in post WW1 Germany) faintly ludicrous; b). strategically naive (you won't exactly attract many people with that call - except perhaps the odd adolescent fantasist and possibly a psychopath or two; c). morally and politically irresponsible (at best) - why would anyone seriously attached to the humane principles of socialism *want* the butchery of civil war?
ed
you put it better than I could, best not to side with me, the jaded working class!
I liked your phraseology, the odd adolescent fantasist and possibly a psychopath
doesn't that sum up a lot of the modern day SWP ?
I remember when the SWP had a chunk of good trade unionists in it, solid, thoughtful types, but my, how has that changed?
students waving placards, ex-students frantically running around in ever decreasing circles screaming doom and gloom
they are as detached from the working class as Tony Blair is, which is not too surprising given the personalities/class backgrounds involved are so similar
so the Wolfie Smith's of the world can't really criticize Dave, whatever he does, as they are useless, the SWP been at politics for over 3 decades, that's 30+ years and the SWP still are incompetent at it
just look at their recent 'projects':
StWC - millions to handfuls
Respect - a political lash-up
Left List - appalling results, but the SWP didn't even know electoral law so lost the Respect name
UAF - unity? where's that?
Unless and until the British Left can articulate a positive and meaningful alternative which connects to the working classes then they'll be ignored, as the SWP is...
Yes Modernity, you're working class. How unlike you to mention it. As I remember you're a nurse aren't you - which obviously makes you very working class. You see, I have a problem. I am a teacher (and presumably a bad middle class person) and so was my dad, but my mum is a nurse and my grandad and grandma on her side were, respectively, a road-digger and a seamstress. So, I was wondering, in your world of crude economistic class reductionism, when you have a working class mum and a middle class dad do the middle class traits/genes (whatever they are) cancel out the working class ones? Perhaps all the bad habits and faults I have can be explained by reference to my father's genes whereas all the more positive traits I have are down to my mother's working class genes. What do you think?
Le Proletariat c'est moi!
"Are you saying that we have to stop cheering when Cuban boxers wallop Americans at the Olympics?"
Ha ha ha - I'm such a sucker for that shit! Bring on the workers' upper cut!
tut tut Ed, both you and snowball should get out of that nasty lower-middle-class habit of personalising politics, bringing out the abuse, arguing in such bad faith and avoiding the political issues
See if you can concentrate on the political issues?
1) the inability of the SWP to achieve anything meaningful and long lasting in 30 plus years?
2) how the class backgrounds of political leaders often impede or adversely characterise the nature of political organisations?
tut tut Ed, both you and snowball should get out of that nasty lower-middle-class habit of personalising politics, bringing out the abuse, arguing in such bad faith and avoiding the political issues
But Modernity, I need your sociological and political expertise on this. As outlined above, I'm confused about my class background and therefore I don't know whether the answers I would give if I jumped through your ludicrous question-hoops will be distorted because of my inherited bad middle class ju-ju or whether my working class genes will mystically, but inevitably, guide me towards utterances of the Truth in a good, honest proletarian way.
I'm honoured to see that you've granted me the status of lower middle class, by the way. Does that mean that the automatic social-biological-phsychological mechanisms by means of which working class people never ever engage in petty disputes, petty selfishness or petty abuse (all of this is scientifically provable fact) have been transmitted to me in diluted form or that I am just slightly less thick and bad and terribly disrespectful to true working class heroes like yourself than other middle class monsters?
Ed,
Listen you adolescent fantasist and possibly a psychopath, when will you get it into your thick lower middle class skull that personalising politics, bringing out the abuse and arguing in such bad faith are not the way that proletarians like me and mod do *debate*.
Got it yet?
I'd agree with Modernity if he/she/it wasn't such a prostitute of Zionism.
[thanks Ed, you've proven my point]
Still the question of:
why are the SWP so useless at politics, despite doing it for 30+ years and with such fanaticism, goes unanswered?
you might think that they would have learn some humility by now?
So, I was wondering, in your world of crude economistic class reductionism, when you have a working class mum and a middle class dad do the middle class traits/genes (whatever they are) cancel out the working class ones?
Your dad sold the only thing he had that was valuable enough to earn a living for his family - his labour power. It would be the economistic interpretation that would catagorize this as working class, no? It's the more elastic, incorporating aspects of culture, Weberian notion of class that does otherwise. Curiously, it's the latter concept that seems to be most used by people describing themselves as Marxists these days. Funny old world...
Modernity - always such a pleasure to debate with you. What do you counterpose to the SWP? The Labour Party? Please - they have been at it 100 years and where has that got the labour movement?
However if you are a supporter of the Labour Party I can understand your frustration at how 'class backgrounds of political leaders often impede or adversely characterise the nature of political organisations' - very few Labour leaders have ever come from the working class have they - though lots of course have used the Labour Party as a personal mechanism to rise above the working class. However, what kind of careerist/ personal advancement does joining an organisation like the swp offer?
Ed- hope you are well, btw - by 'civil war' I mean of course it in the Leninist sense of workers' revolution - or class war if you like. It would therefore be very unlike Yugoslavia or any of the civil wars raging in the world today (the Congo for example). The people who fight in those wars are driven to kill out of the desire to settle old tribal/ethnic/nationalist etc scores, hence they are intractable and very bloody. The dynamics of say the Red Army in the Russian Civil War was completely different - see here
'The political departments were central in raising the political and cultural consciousness of the army. Half a million soldiers joined the party during the war, and the army was fighting a battle to make revolutionaries out of as many as possible. To this end, despite strained resources, the political departments poured out pamphlets, newspapers, posters and leaflets, and set up reading courses and mobile libraries to combat illiteracy so the soldiers could read reports from the other fronts and take active part in the debates arising in the new state. By the spring of 1919 reading and writing were taught daily. By the end of 1920 there were 3,000 Red Army schools, 60 amateur theatres, and libraries with reading rooms in every soldiers’ club. The commitment to political education in the army is summed up in the first emblem of the army: the hammer and sickle with a rifle and a book.'
Modernity doesn't actually have any ideas or answers. His posts contain nothing but:
- petty sectarian attacks (particularly on the SWP)
- ad nauseum repetition of his prolier-than-thou routine
- tedious attempts to tie people in rhetorical knots than you can see coming a mile off (often involving a Will-you-condemn-a-thon)
I'm well thank you Snowball -hope everything's going Ok for you too. I think that's a rather rosy view of the Russian Civil War, though, which after all had more than its fair share of atrocities and a very big body count. I don't doubt the facts and statistics you quote, only the Bolshevik army did actually torture (despite it being officially disapproved of) - there's a pictoral proof of it in Figes' book - and of course they did execute a lot of people with or without any kind of right of appeal, often on the spot and on the whim of those doing the killing.
Shuggy - long time no see. How's the Decent war for civilisation going? The sophisticated Marxist view is not economistic which posits a one way causal relationship between the 'economic' and 'superstructural' factors. Class determination is governed by one's position in the social relations of production - which against popular misconception, incorporate ideological and political factors.
I wasn't really seriously asking for Modernity's help in this. Don't know if you worked that out.
Snowball,
my original point related to your accusation of bad faith at Dave, when you argued "The problem is Dave that I am not convinced that you are actually 'implacably opposed to US imperialism'."
which I thought was a bit cheeky coming from an SWPer
but be that as it may, the SWP has singularly failed over the past five years, even on their own terms, project after project by the SWP is stitched up, running to the ground, or split asunder
So really you, Snowball, have very little grounds for criticising Dave, who makes an honest independent contribution to political debate
As for the other points, I do have to wonder why after 30 years the SWP is still such a conspicuous failure?
even hardened SWP activists, such as Mark Steel, have asked that question? "AH, THE BRITISH LEFT, WHAT WE DO TO OURSELVES" http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1051
I just wish that SWPers would learn a bit of humility, with your incompetent political leaders you have nothing to brag about
as for Ed,
I'm just surprised that a fairly bleeding obvious point has to be argued over and over and over again, that point being that the social composition of organisations can dictate how they operate, their interactions and their internal politics.
I believe Lenin remarks on this form of behaviour in his Left-Wing Communism...
I welcome anyone else's thesis as to why the SWP are so politically useless?
At least prior to 1989 the old tankies thought they were defending "Socialism", while most "orthodox" Trots considered the USSr to be a "degenerate workers' state". Both crazy, of course. But internally coherent and motivated by the idea that the USSR was in some way an advance upon capitalism. No-one, of course, now believes that Putin's Russia is anything other than a brutal capitalist dictatorship without even the saving graces of bourgeois democracy. And yet - amazingly - not just tankies like the Graun's Seamas Milne but supposed "Trots" like the SWP give support to Putin's imperialist thuggery in Geoegia. Upon what basis? "My enemy's enemy is my friend." An apolitical nostalgia for the USSR? Simple-minded hatred of the "West"? A general macho-posturing sympathy with dictatorship over bourgeois democracy? Whatever the motivation, it's surely got nothing to do with socialism -even to the extent of the old tankies' crazy belief in the USSR was subjectively pro-socialist. No wonder most sane people, seeing the likes of the 'Moning Star', the SWP and the so-called "peace movement", are repulsed.
The sophisticated Marxist view is not economistic which posits a one way causal relationship between the 'economic' and 'superstructural' factors.
*yawn*