by SAMIR AMIN
In the art of war, each belligerent chooses the terrain considered most advantageous for its battle for the offensive and tries to impose that terrain on its adversary, so that it is put on the defensive. The same goes for politics, both at the national level and in geopolitical struggles.
For the last 30 years or so, the powers forming the Triad of collective imperialism (the United States, Western Europe, and Japan) have been defining two battlefields, which are still current: “democracy” and “the environment.”
This paper aims first to examine the concepts and substance in the definitions of each of these two themes selected by the Triad powers and to make a critical analysis of them from the viewpoint of the interests of the peoples, nations, and states at which they are targeted, the countries of the South, after those of the former East. Then we shall look at the role of all the instruments brought into play by the strategies of imperialism to wage its battles: “liberal” globalization, with its accompanying ideology (conventional economics), the militarization of globalization, “good governance,” “aid,” the “war on terrorism” and preventive warfare, as well as the accompanying ideologies (cultural post-modernism). And each time we shall highlight the conditions for an effective response from the peoples and states of the South to the challenge presented by the reorganization of the Triad’s imperialism.
1. “Democracy,” What “Democracy”?
It was a stroke of genius of Atlantic alliance diplomacy to choose the field of “democracy” for their offensive, which was aimed, from the beginning, at the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the re-conquest of the countries of Eastern Europe. This decision goes back to the 1970s and gradually became crystallized in the Conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and then with the signing of the final Act in Helsinki in 1975. Jacques Andreani, in his book with the evocative title Le Piège, Helsinki et la chute du communisme (The Trap: Helsinki and the Fall of Communism), explains how the Soviets, who were expecting an agreement on the disarmament of the NATO and a genuine détente, were quite simply deceived by their Western partners.1
It was a stroke of genius because the “question of democracy” was a genuine issue and the least one could say was that the Soviet regimes were certainly not “democratic,” however one defined its concept and practice. The countries of the Atlantic Alliance, in contrast, could qualify themselves as “democratic,” whatever the limitations and contradictions in their actual political practices, subordinated to the requirements of capitalist reproduction. The comparison of the systems operated in their favor.
This discourse on democracy then gradually replaced the one supported by the Soviets and their allies: “peaceful coexistence,” associated with “respect” for the political practices of both parties and for “non-interference” in their internal affairs.
The coexistence discourse had had its important moments. For example, the Stockholm Appeal in the 1950s reminded people of the real nuclear threat implied by the aggressive diplomacy employed by the United States since the Potsdam Conference (1945), reinforced by the atomic bombing of Japan just a few days after the conference.
However, at the same time the choice of this strategy (coexistence and non-interference) was convenient — or could be convenient, depending on circumstances — to the dominant powers in both the West and the East. For it enabled the realities of the respective descriptions, “capitalist” and “socialist,” to be taken for granted by the countries of both the West and the East. It eliminated all serious discussion about the precise nature of the two systems: that is, examination of the actually existing capitalism of our era (oligopoly capitalism) and “actually existing socialism.” The United Nations (with the tacit agreement of the powers of the two worlds) changed the terms of “capitalism” and “socialism” to “market economies” and “centrally planned economies” (or, to be mischievous, “administered economies”).
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