US hegemony

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Be or not to be, problem for U.S Hegemony
  نویسنده:حسین اژدر
۱۳۹۷/تهران
از زمان "توسیدید"(Thucydides) مهمترین اصل در روابط بین الملل این بوده است که قدرت به معنای پیروزی در جنگ است.

بنا بر این در جنگ بازیگر قدرت مند تر تقریبا باید همیشه پیروز شود .در واقع این توقع مبتنی بر پشتیبانی توازن است.
استدلال "اندرو مارک" در مورد چگونگی پیروزی کشور های ضعیف در جنگ های نامتقارن شامل سه عنصر مهم است :
1-قدرت نسبی منافع نسبی را توجیه میکند
2-منافع نسبی آسیب پذیری سیاسی نسبی را تنبین میکند
3-آسیب پذیری نسبی علت شکست بازیگران قدرت مند را تبیین میکند.

Lack of US existence in the Far East may pose bigger changes, negative one, to the stability of the region, in vast context to the world. Especially, possible unification of Korean Peninsular might also change the destiny of region drastically.

This is an brief overview of the past 75 years of geopolitics. It argues that fossil fuels are central to geopolitics and present a very real reason for international delay on climate action. In this context, climate activists must push even harder for an end to fossil fuel reliance and its replacement wherever possible as it will mean undermining a global system that has perpetuated wars, poverty and structural inequalities and gross disparities of power in the world.

Históricamente, América Latina y el Caribe han sufrido la dominación hegemónica estadounidense, tanto directa como indirectamente. La política interna de los países de la región ha estado en muchas ocasiones marcada y constreñida por la influencia del estado hegemónico norteamericano, hasta el punto de que el gobierno estadounidense consideraba a sus vecinos del sur y centro del continente como “su patio trasero”. Sin embargo, con la llegada del nuevo siglo y las nuevas redistribuciones de poder del sistema internacional, América Latina y Caribe van poco a poco recuperando su autonomía. De una influencia directa, quasi imperial, Estados Unidos ha pasado a una estrategia off-shore que, en consecuencia, ha dado lugar a respuestas contra hegemónicas y equilibradoras en la región. La emergencia de nuevos actores económicos y políticos regionales ha provocado una redistribución de la influencia y el desarrollo de América Latina está cada vez menos en las manos de los Estados Unidos. Así, es posible observar nuevas estrategias equilibradoras en la región en distintos grados. Por lo tanto, ¿cuál es el futuro de América Latina? ¿Camina hacia la multipolaridad?

Solar geoengineering technologies intended to slow climate change by injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere are gaining traction in climate policy. Solar geoengineering is considered "fast, cheap, and imperfect" in that it could rapidly reduce planetary temperatures with low cost technology, but potentially generate catastrophic consequences for climate, weather, and biodiversity. Governance has therefore been central to solar geoengineering debates, particularly the question of unilateral deployment, whereby a state or group of states could deploy the technology against the wishes of the international community. In this context, recent, influential scenarios posit that-given technological and political complexities-solar geoengineering deployment will likely be guided by a "logic of multilateralism." I challenge this assertion by arguing that solar geoengineering is defined by equally compelling 'logics of militarization.' I detail recent involvement in solar geoengineering development on the part of U.S. defense, intelligence, and foreign policy institutions, geoengineering scenarios that adopt militarized logics and expertise, and Realist international relations theories that undergird leading governance scenarios. I then demonstrate that the U.S. military has a strategic interest in solar geoengineering, as U.S. hegemony is predicated on expanding fossil fuels, but the military deems climate change a threat to national security. The unique spatio-temporal qualities of solar geoengineering can bridge the gap between these contradictory positions. In examining the militarization of solar geoengineering, I aim to ground recent conceptions of "planetary sovereignty" in the emergent field of "geopolitical ecology" through the latter's more granular approach to the world-making powers of key geopolitical-ecological actors.

China is the first major country to begin its rapid rise in the era of globalization — yet many observers who study the rise of China continue to interpret Chinese national accounts, such as world share of exports, manufacturing, and most of all GDP, as if we still live in a pre-globalization age. That is, with production and value chains now globalized, it becomes more important to investigate who ultimately controls and owns that production rather than discerning its geographic concentration. This essays demonstrates that this is especially the case for China's role as workshop of the world, since it is foreign corporations — especially American — that ultimately own and profit by far the most from the bulk of the internationally

Iraq parliament has passed a resolution on January 5, 2020 to oust US-led coalition forces from country, as hostile response grew after the assassination of Qasim Sulemani, a top Iranian military commander, near Baghdad airport. The US State Department rejected this demand and said Washington and Baghdad should instead focus on fixing their alliance.US and its allies were expecting that their presence in Iraq will be welcomed by different Iraqi communities as these communities came out of Saddam's suppression with the help of US and its allies. This study tends to address the fundamental challenge regarding US' consistently diminishing influence over the Iraqi society. Though heterogeneous in its nature and fabricated in its essence, US still have no pivotal powersay over any of the Iraqi societal, religious or political groups. Particularly, the Iraqi majority Shiite population is real beneficiary of US campaign against Saddam as they remained under the despotic rule of Sunni minority led by Saddam. In post Saddam period their increasing inclination towards Iran has changed the entire socio-political scenario of Iraq and despite huge strategic investment in Iraq, US has been marginalized in main stream decision making process. Consequently, US supremacy in entire Middle East went under question.

Emperyalizm, Hegemonya, İmparatorluk, uluslararası politik ekonomi literatürünün en önemli başlıklarını, Irak'ın ABD tarafından işgalini merkeze alarak tartışıyor. Kitapta bu üç kavram, önce sırtlarında taşıdıkları zamandışılık zırhlarından Gramscigi / Coxgil tarihselciliğin nezaretinde sıyrılıyorlar. Ardından da Braudel'i hatırlayarak bir buçuk asrı aşan uzun vade boyunca ardışık dünya düzenlerinin başlıca karakteristiklerini özetliyorlar. Bu yolculuk sırasında Batı yayılmacılığının kolonyalist ve emperyalist evreleri, Marksist ve Liberal geleneklerin eleştirisi etrafında inceleniyor. Daha rafine iktidar mekanizmalarının mercek altına yatırıldığı hegemonya ve imparatorlukla ilgili kısımlarda da, kuruluş döneminden başlayarak Amerikan hâkimiyet mantığının temel kodlan ve içine düştüğü kriz üzerinde duruluyor. Yapılan tüm değerlendirmelerin ışığında, fikirler ve çıkarların işgal
kararında nasıl buluştuğu sorusu ise son bölümde cevaplanıyor. Burada yalnızca Avrupa'nın özgürlük arayışı, Batı dışı dünyanın yükselişi ve ulusaşırılaşmadan oluşan dinamikler demetiyle "emperyal eylem" arasındaki bağlantı sorgulanmıyor. Söz konusu sistemik çerçeveyi anlamlandıran tarihsel bloğun ana bileşenleri de tahlil ediliyor. Hristiyan Sağı, Hristiyan Siyonistler
ve Yeni Muhafazakârlar gibi grupların oluşum ve koalisyon kurma süreçleri, kendi alt zamanlarına odaklanılarak anlatılıyor.

Tanner Mirrlees 


From Katy Perry training alongside US Marines in a music video, to the global box-office mastery of the US military-supported Transformers franchise, to the explosion of war games such as Call of Duty, it's clear that the US security state is a dominant force in media culture. But is the ubiquity of cultural products that glorify the security state a new phenomenon? Or have Uncle Sam and Hollywood been friends for a long time?

Hearts and Mines examines the rise and reach of the US Empire's culture industry -- a nexus between the US's security state and media firms and the source of cultural products that promote American strategic interests around the world. Although the US government and media corporations pursue different interests on the world stage (the former, national security, and the latter, profit), this book documents how structural alliances and the synergistic relationships between them support the production and flow of empire-extolling cultural goods.

Building on and extending Herbert I. Schiller’s classic study of US Empire and communications, Tanner Mirrlees highlights the symbiotic geopolitical and economic relationships between the US state and media firms that drive the production of imperial culture.


Table of Contents

Preface: The Personal is Geopolitical

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The US Empire’s Culture Industry, circa 2012

1. The US Empire and the Culture Industry

2. Public Diplomacy and Selling the American Way to the World

3. The US Culture Industry: Still Number One

4. The DOD--News Media Complex

5. The DOD--Hollywood Complex

6. The DOD--Digital Games Complex

Conclusion: US Empire, Cultural Imperialism, and Cultural Policy, at Large

References

Index


Reviews

"A great achievement and timely contribution to the field, Hearts and Mines will rise to the top of all reading lists on the subject of media and empire, US hegemony, and the political economy of communication."

-- Richard Maxwell, co-author of Greening the Media

"A fascinating, provocative book that invigorates our understanding of the relationship between the culture industries and US empire. Mirrlees detonates prevailing myths about the ‘liberal bias’ of popular culture through a meticulous excavation of how imperial political interests, values, and objectives are woven into the production of news, cinema, and digital gaming. Hearts and Mines will change how you think about the politics of culture."

-- Shane Gunster, author of Capitalizing on Culture: Critical Theory for Cultural Studies

If the United States made global capitalism in the twentieth century (Panitch & Gindin 2012),  can China unmake this American making in the twenty-first? If global capitalism was made by integrating the West under the aegis of American hegemony, then can China construct an alternative world order by integrating the East? This essay argues that there are severe contradictions constraining China’s capacity to successfully challenge a global capitalism that continues to be centred upon the United States, including in East Asia. The most important contradictions lie in the nature of China’s nationalist discourse and its economic integration with Western—particularly American—capital. Any sober assessment of China’s new mission of challenging the United States in the twenty-first century needs to be assessed in light of these contradictions, with their unknowable domestic consequences.

Con base en la estructura teórica desarrollada por el análisis de sistemas-mundo, se analiza el ciclo hegemónico estadounidense en el marco de las tendencias seculares que han llevado al sistema-mundo moderno a una situación de turbulencia (definida en términos físicos) antesala de un proceso de caos que lo extinguirá como sistema histórico. Considerando el control energético como la base del poder material estadounidense en el sistema-mundo, se analiza la construcción del «muro de los petrodólares» y su correlativo recurso a la emisión descontrolada de moneda («señoreaje») como mecanismos centrales de un «aterrizaje suave» de su decadencia hegemónica que ahora se enfrenta al dilema de una desarticulación geopolítica acelerada en Medio Oriente y Eurasia en general. Finalmente, se distingue críticamente entre la crisis de la decadencia hegemónica estadounidense y la crisis estructural del capitalismo como sistema histórico.

" What were the main features of the Bretton Woods System and what were the reasons for its collapse? " Introduction Approaching the end of World War Two, ministers from 44 mostly industrialised nations met at Bretton Woods (BW), New Hampshire to design a new international financial regime that would become known as the Bretton Woods System (BWS). This essay will examine this system, firstly by examining the historical and contextual background of the BW conference, and use this confluence to locate the system that emerged from it. Following this, the crux of the work will consist firstly of an examination of the main features of the BWS, which are identified as: exchange rate controls, the supplementary supply of international reserves and a mechanism for adjusting balance of payments (BOP) disequilibria. The final part of this piece will then establish and analyse the principle reasons for the collapse of the system, notably, inconstancies involved in liquidity, adjustment, and confidence; an increasingly pluralised and financially interdependent world; and an emerging intellectual framework for the floating rate of exchange.

La emergencia de nuevos procesos de integración en América Latina, como la Alianza del Pacífico (ap), integrada por México, Colombia, Chile y Perú, manifiesta el interés de estos países por construir un proyecto común a través del cual fomentar su crecimiento económico e insertarse mejor en las actuales dinámicas mundiales. Los países miembros de la Alianza tienen vínculos importantes con Estados Unidos, tanto por su modelo económico como por los tratados de libre comercio firmados con dicha potencia, pero la creación de este bloque está orientada principalmente al comercio con Asia Pacífico, pues se desarrolla en un contexto económico internacional en el cual están surgiendo potencias emergentes, como China, que está compitiendo con Estados Unidos por el comercio regional e internacional, y cuya economía es ya la segunda más importante a escala mundial. De ahí que estos países latinoamericanos busquen aprovechar su relación también con China y fomentar su comercio con la región asiática como una forma de diversificación, lo que, además abre las puertas a la inversión de China para tener mayor presencia en la región latinoamericana. El presente artículo analiza esa compleja relación de elementos internos e internacionales que incentivaron la creación de la Alianza del Pacífico, y revisa el lugar clave que ocupa este proyecto integracionista en la pugna hegemónica de Estados Unidos frente al crecimiento de la presencia China en la región latinoamericana. De igual forma, mediante la revisión de los volúmenes comerciales y de inversión
extranjera directa de los países miembros, tanto entre ellos como con terceros, se hace una interpretación de la actual potencialidad de la Alianza del Pacífico y sus posibilidades de crecimiento, pues ha despertado el interés de numerosos países en el mundo.

The rise of the Pacific Alliance as one of the newest integration process in Latin America, shows the interest of these countries to build an economic block to promote their growth and to engage better on today´s global dynamics. The countries of the Alliance, composed by Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Peru, share with the United States free trade agreements and a similar economic model, however the creation of this block is mainly focused on boosting the trade with Asia Pacific, this region has an intense economic growth and have emerging powers as China, which is competing with the United States for the regional and global market and whose economy is already the second largest worldwide. The Pacific Alliance is an attempt to promote the trade with Asia’s growing economies and take advantage of this diversification, nevertheless, from China view, this is an opportunity to have a greater presence in Latin America. This paper analyzes the relation between internal and international elements that encouraged the conformation of the Pacific Alliance, and presents an approach to the key role of this integration project in the US hegemonic struggle against the growing Chinese presence in Latin America. It also evaluates the current potential of the Pacific Alliance and its potential of growth, as it has aroused the interest of many countries worldwide.

Few realise that amid rising international tensions, inter alia over Ukraine, Taiwan of China, Iran and AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States), nuclear arms control is today almost entirely dismantled and a manifestly declining and desperate US has launched a new nuclear arms, now also targeting China, making war and even nuclear war seem increasingly possible. The political and geopolitical economy of nuclear proliferation and control here highlights the singular role of the US in driving the arms race, arguing that the US desire to dominate the world economy, not the Cold War, caused the nuclear arms race; that the only surviving arms control treaty, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has become more a channel for proliferation than a dam against it; and that the US used the NPT to justify its post-Cold War international aggression against some countries while violating it to aid allies.

This research focuses on the United States’ unique political experiment of networking or project of organizing principle transformation. New academic terms, such as a network state and network power, were originally coined to explain the postmodernization of the modern state and the modern interstate order in the contemporary context of globalization. In contrast, this research aims to ① explain a compound republic model of the US as an alternative to a hierarchical modern state, ② reinterpret America’s liberal internationalist tradition and its embodiment, i.e., a global alliance system, from a network perspective, and ③ analyze how the US has sought to revise the Westphalian problématique by exercising the power of organizing principle or programming. In addition, I will explore the historical evolution of the East Asian alliance system as a specific example of America’s networking strategy and discuss its implication for South Korean foreign policy.

In this book, Arturo Santa-Cruz advances an understanding of power as a social
relationship and applies it consistently to the economic realm in United States
relations with other countries of the Western Hemisphere. Following the academic and popular debate on the ebb and flow of US hegemony, this work
centers the analysis in a critical case for the exercise of US power through its
economic statecraft: the Americas—its historical zone of influence. The rationale for the regional focus is methodological: if it can be shown that Washington’s
sway has decreased in the area since the early 1970s, when the discussion about
this matter started, it can be safely assumed that the same has occurred in other
latitudes. The analysis focuses on three regions: North America, Central America
and South America. Since each region contains countries that have at times
maintained very different relationships with the United States, the findings contribute to a better understanding of the practice of US power in the sub-region
in question, adding greater variability to the overall results.

Originally published in the Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi magazine, October 2008, no. 356; pp. 25-29; given as a lecture by invitation at the Medina Theater in Beirut, Lebanon.

Translation published in Heinrich Boll Stiftung Publication, Series on Democracy, "Emerging Powers and the Middle East – Competition or Partnership in a Multi-Polar World Order?“ , Volume 22, December 2010, pp. 9-32.

In this book, Arturo Santa-Cruz advances an understanding of power as a social relationship and applies it consistently to the economic realm in United States relations with other countries of the Western Hemisphere. Following the academic and popular debate on the ebb and flow of US hegemony, this work centers the analysis in a critical case for the exercise of US power through its economic statecraft: the Americas-its historical zone of influence. The rationale for the regional focus is methodological: if it can be shown that Washington's sway has decreased in the area since the early 1970s, when the discussion about this matter started, it can be safely assumed that the same has occurred in other latitudes. The analysis focuses on three regions: North America, Central America and South America. Since each region contains countries that have at times maintained very different relationships with the United States, the findings contribute to a better understanding of the practice of US power in the sub-region in question, adding greater variability to the overall results.

บทความนี้ศึกษาความคิดของ Robert W. Cox ในประเด็นของอารยธรรม ในทศวรรษ 1940 ซึ่งได้นำเสนอเกี่ยวกับความขัดแย้งทางการเมืองใน Quebec โดยมีรากฐานจากอารยธรรมในแคนาดา ครอบคลุมเชื้อชาติ ภาษา และศาสนา เขาได้เสนอแนวคิดว่าด้วยอารยธรรมขึ้นมาภายหลังสงครามเย็น เพราะไม่เห็นด้วยกับการมุ่งความสำคัญที่ความขัดแย้งทางการเมืองของ Samuel Huntington และ Francis Fukuyama แต่กลับเพิกเฉยต่อโครงสร้างทางเศรษฐกิจและความสัมพันธ์ทางสังคม อันที่จริงแล้วความขัดแย้งทางอารยธรรมก่อตัวมาตั้งแต่ระบบรัฐเวสฟาเลียนและสร้างขึ้นมาโดยประเทศในภาคพื้นยุโรป ดังนั้นการครองอำนาจนำขอสหรัฐอเมริกาในศตวรรษ 21 ที่มีเป้าหมายเพื่อครอบงำทางอารยธรรมเพียงหนึ่งเดียว จึงยังประสบปัญหาจากการต่อสู้ของอารยธรรมจีนในระบบทุนนิยมโลกและอารยธรรมอิสลามก็ตอบโต้ต่ออารยธรรมตะวันตกด้วยการก่อการร้าย หรือเรียกได้ว่าการตอบโต้การครองอำนาจนำ

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This article studies the thoughts of Robert W. Cox regarding civilization. In 1940s, Cox proposed about political conflict in Quebec based on Canadian civilization, including the issues on race, language, and religion. He proposed the concept of civilization after cold war because he disagreed with Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama for putting an emphasis on political conflicts over structural economic and social relations. Arguably, the civilization conflict was formed since the Westphalian inter-state system and established by the Western nations. Thus, American Hegemony aiming to dominate of a one civilization in the 21st Century is still clashed with Chinese civilization in Global Capitalism and Islamic civilization to counter the Western civilization. By using terrorism, that might be called counter-hegemony.

In transmitting President Richard Nixon's orders for a "massive" bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, "Anything that flies on everything that moves".  As Barack Obama wages his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and Francois Hollande promises a "merciless" attack on the rubble of Syria, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger's murderous honesty.

As a witness to the human consequences of aerial savagery - including the beheading of victims, their parts festooning trees and fields - I am not surprised by the disregard of memory and history, yet again. A telling example is the rise to power of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who had much in common with today's Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They, too, were ruthless medievalists who began as a small sect. They, too, were the product of an American-made apocalypse, this time in Asia.

Fareed Khan makes no claim to the authorship of this commentary.

This paper examines the spread of the international use of the renminbi (yuan), with particular focus on, the multipolarisation of the international monetary system. Additionally, the study addresses the question of how the spread of a new currency in international financial markets influences the external financing opportunities of small open economies (e.g. Hungary). The author sets out two possible scenarios in relation to the spread of the Chinese renminbi (yuan) and, in terms of the development of the entire international financial system, he points out that over the next years it will be of crucial importance which model the Chinese economic policy will move toward, and if there is a road that leads from the one to the other.

For the past six decades, the US has managed to create and sustain a hegemonic position in the global financial/monetary order. This is based on three central pillars: 1) institutional power (control over outcomes in the International Monetary Fund), 2) structural power (dollar/Wall-Street dominance, forming an ‘exorbitant privilege’) and 3) ideational power (Neoliberalism as the leading politico-economic ideology - especially since the 1970s). In concerto this has served the countries’ very own interest, whereas other nations have repeatedly been forced to shoulder most of the burdens of adjustment. However, the sovereign debt crisis of 2008ff. (as a critical juncture) not only laid bare the deficiencies of the US-centred order and the increasing vulnerability of the highly indebted and economically stuttering hegemon, but also opened a window of opportunity for its main rival: liquidity-rich and booming China. Accordingly, Beijing is now starting to contest the US by: 1) significantly increasing its influence within the International Monetary Fund, 2) extending the international role and convertibility of the Renminbi and establishing Shanghai as a new global financial center until 2020, and 3) following a Neo-Mercantilist/Listian approach which is signified by gradual financial liberalization and an accumulation of monetary reserves.

Bu çalışma, ABD’nin büyük stratejisinin berrak bir kavrayışı için indirgemeci ve aktör merkezli yaklaşımların ötesine geçip onun küresel kapitalizmin doğası ve işleyişi bağlamında ele alınması gerektiği varsayımdan hareket etmektedir. Bu amaçla devletlerin, toplumsal güçlerin ve piyasaların karşılıklı kuruluşuna odaklanan eleştirel ekonomi politik çerçevesinden ABD dış politikasının toplumsal kaynakları irdelenecektir. Büyük strateji çevrelerinin yapanlığı/failliği (agency) yapısal bağlamlarına yerleştirilerek çözümlenecektir. Söz konusu yapısal şartların ise aktörlerin kendi toplumsal konumlarının yanı sıra küresel bağlam ve ABD’nin içindeki hegemonik konumundan oluştuğu varsayımından hareketle ABD büyük stratejisinin seyrinin, belirli tarihsel ve yapısal bağlamlarda eyleyen aktörlerin ve faktörlerin bir bileşkesi biçiminde anlaşılması gerektiği savunulacaktır.

This paper argues that one key characteristic of the new American populism is its orientation toward global military confrontation with “Islam.” The paper focuses on texts by Michael Anton, Stephen K. Bannon, including Bannon’s film Torchbearer (2016). Comparing their ideological work to Alexander Dugin’s writings on the global order, the authors organize the comparison around the contextual similarity between American and Russian rightwing thinkers.  There are substantive affinities, but more important is the similar relation between textual production and imperial context. We conclude by arguing that these new authoritarian movements and regimes combine coherent ideological projects with deliberately chaotic, even incoherent statements and interventions.

In this paper, the aim is to give an explanation of Alexander Dugin’s critique of Western World, especially its hegemonic stance during the post Cold War era. By conducting discourse analysis method some findings as follows are reached. Dugin rejects Western hegemony and unipolarity in today’s world. Idealizing the West in all social, political and economic fields and forcing them are new type of racism according to Dugin. He accepts liberalism, socialism and fascism are the three ideologies that dominated the 20th century but disagrees with the idea of triumph of liberalism. He proposes a 4th ideology in which unipolarity turns into multipolarity and all Western values like individualism, human rights, democracy, free market, constitution, secularism are rejected. If the West and Modernity insists on imposing its own local experience and values as universal, obligatory and normative, then such imposition should definitely be fought against.  . The idea that world must operate with economic laws and universal morality of human rights is not acceptable to Dugin. Thus, it is thought that Dugin’s criticism that he has developed in years intellectually significant and explanatory for the recent developments that has taken place among the major political actors of the international politics.

“Global hegemony” might be defined as a situation in which one nation-state plays a predominant role in organizing, regulating, and stabilizing the world political economy. The use of armed force has always been an inseparable part of hegemony, but military power depends upon the economic resources at the disposal of the state. It cannot be deployed to answer every threat to geopolitical and economic interests, and it raises the danger of imperial overreach, as was the case for Britain in South Africa and the United States in Vietnam (Du Boff, 2003).
Again, hegemony is a constant struggle against a multitude of resistances to ideological domination, and any balance of forces that it achieves is always precarious, always in need of re-achievement. Hegemony's 'victories' are never final, and any society will evidence numerous points where subordinate groups have resisted the total domination that is hegemony's aim, and have withheld their consent to the system."
Although the emergence of the United States as a global hegemon had roots in national and international conditions prior to World War II, that war provided the U.S. with the historical opportunity to establish its global hegemony. U.S. global hegemony was not only a consequence of economic, political, and military domination, but also a reflection of the diffusion of cultural and ideological values that advanced the role of the United States as a controlling power in the world. Hence, the U.S assumed the mantle of legitimacy, wrapped in the cloak of hegemony with its ideological presumptions that “U.S. global dominance was the natural result of historical progress, rather than the competitive outcome of political-economic power” (Smith, 2003, p. 20).

Crises and Hegemonic Transitions reworks the concept of hegemony at the international level and analyses its relation to world market crises. Returning to the critical edition of Gramsci’s Quaderni and maintaining that the author’s work is permeated by Marx’s Capital and the law of value, Fusaro argues that imperialist states strive to constructing hegemonic relations in order to secure capital accumulation using domination and leadership, coercion and consensus, and that economic crises have only the potential to provoke crises of hegemony. Tracing the vicissitudes of US hegemony from the interwar period to the present and assessing the Great Depression’s and the Great Recession’s impact, Fusaro provides a novel way to interpret past and present developments within the world economy.

Google books: https://bit.ly/2E85rsl

In Life Advice from Below, Eric C. Hendriks offers the first systematic, comparative study of the globalization of American-style self-help culture and the cultural conflicts this creates in different national contexts. The self-help guru is an archetypical American figure associated with individualism, materialism and the American Dream. Nonetheless, the self-help industry is spreading globally, thriving in China and other seemingly unlikely places. Controversy follows in its wake, as the self-help industry, operating outside of formal education and state institutions, outflanks philosophical, religious and political elites who have their own visions of the Good Life. Through a comparison of Germany and China, Hendriks analyzes how the competition between self-help gurus and institutional authorities unfolds under radically different politico-cultural regimes.

“This witty book charms its way through a very serious sociology of the seriously quirky field of self-help books. Read it for its fascinating pop-culture insights and you’ll come away with a deep understanding of contemporary sociological theory. Highly recommended.” - Salvatore Babones, University of Sydney

“Hendriks’ finding that Germany rather than China is more resistant to self-help gurus offers a powerful corrective to the assumption in much of the globalization literature that the greatest cultural divide is between the Anglo-Western European sphere and the rest of the globe.” - Rodney Benson, New York University

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The contemporary movement to end human trafficking rose to prominence in the early to mid 1990s. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, the US found itself in need of new tools to extend its global reach. This report argues that the modern day movement to abolish human trafficking is one of the new tools used to advance US hegemony. South Africa provides a unique context for the study of how US hegemony has been employed through this movement. The rise of this movement coincided with the rise of democracy in the rainbow nation. Under Apartheid, US policy toward South Africa was linked with the fight against communism. The US would channel money to black liberation movements in order to shape their views in a pro-western direction. South Africa was considered important to US economic interests and prosperity. With the communist enemy gone, the US has employed new tools to influence ideology, policy and legislation. Through studying the Anti-Trafficking in Persons (TIP) movement in the South African context, this report analyzes how the movement is a tool of hegemony. Tactics used to gain public consent and legitimize the cause are uncovered, as are coercive measures used to stronghold the South African government to comply with the US.

Since the end of the Cold War, United Nations peace operations have become an established and prominent feature of world politics. From the Sudan to the Ivory Coast, the UN now carries-out extensive governance related functions, under the generic rubric of peace operations, and is a significant political force in Southern states and societies. Despite these powerful new political roles, however, UN peace operations are frequently treated by the mainstream professional and academic literature as a normal and non-political set of activities for an international organisation to undertake. A primary task of this monograph is to problematise these apolitical notions, especially in relation to the rise of peace operations within the UN, and to uncover the political and socioeconomic import of peace activities for subject societies. To this end, the first part of the book outlines the political context in which to situate the prevalence of peace operations in the UN today. This context is the historically contested nature of the UN’s ‘programme of work’ among states and various groups of states from the 1940s to our current era. In essence, it is shown that what the UN is tasked with carrying out at any given moment is itself a highly contentious issue, reflecting various political and ideological agendas. Through new empirical research on the UN Secretariat, it is revealed that the rise of peace operations in the UN since the 1990s is no exception, reflecting a Northern agenda to strip the organisation of its political economy functions and replace them with specialised political and security related tasks at the borderlands of the interstate system. The second part of the monograph examines the application of these new peace and security functions in three seminal cases of the 1990s, in Angola, Rwanda and Somalia.  What these detailed empirical studies expose is the political logic of their design and implementation, such as how they fitted into wider projects of transforming subject societies into liberal market democracies and how they featured in the bigger picture of great power politics.

Especulações sobre a evolução da ordem global do século XXI, à luz do Direito Internacional e da Política Mundial
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Diplomata, professor no Centro Universitário de Brasília (Uniceub).
Notas para “palestra magna” no Curso de Pós-Graduação em Direito Internacional na Faculdade CEDIN, a convite do
professor Leonardo Nemer e da professora Amina Guerra.
Dia 5/04/2021, 19hs.

A despeito do título pretensioso, não existe, na verdade, uma ordem global, nunca existiu, e é duvidoso que venha a existir alguma no decorrer de nossas existências, ou em qualquer tempo futuro. Explicitando: não existe uma ordem global, pelo simples motivo da diversidade de povos e das civilizações, embora possam ter existido diversas ordens regionais parcialmente globais, eventualmente interagindo umas com as outras, por vezes cooperativamente, em outras ocasiões de maneira mais agressiva. Não existe e dificilmente existirá, no futuro previsível, uma ordem global, uma vez que a humanidade continuará diversa e desigual até onde a vista alcança. As sociedades humanas ainda não conseguiram superar as paixões, ódios, ciúmes, ambições, prepotência e arrogância que estão conosco desde a guerra de Troia, pelo menos. Mas, atenção, a Helena não tem nada a ver com a guerra de Troia, e sim tratou-se de disputas entre egos inflados de dirigentes políticos movidos por interesses bem mais mesquinhos, ligados, como sempre ocorre, a poder e dinheiro, um reforçando o outro. As paixões e os interesses estão no centro disso tudo, e assim continuará sendo, com uma humanidade ainda muito diversa e diversificada, não integrada etnicamente, socialmente, culturalmente, e menos ainda economicamente, a despeito da globalização.

O historiador britânico Arnold Toynbee foi, até meados do século XX, um grande estudioso da ascensão e do declínio das civilizações, assunto que tem a ver tangencialmente com o nosso objeto: a existência de várias ordens globais regionais-geralmente grandes impérios-e sua sucessão ao longo do tempo. Não sou nenhum Toynbee, não tenho a sua imensa capacidade de síntese histórica, e não pretendo mergulhar no itinerário das grandes civilizações do passado para tentar discernir alguns princípios evolutivos de seus itinerários respectivos, da ascensão, do clímax, do declínio e eventual desaparecimento de algumas delas, sobretudo em direção ao futuro.
(...)

Little has contributed more to the emergence of today's world of financial globalization than the setup of the international monetary system. In its current shape, it has a hierarchical structure with the US-Dollar (USD) at the top and various other monetary areas forming a multilayered periphery to it. A key feature of the system is the creation of USD offshore-a feature that in the 1950s and 60s developed in co-evolution with the Bretton Woods System and in the 1970s replaced it. Since the 2007-9 Financial Crisis, this 'Offshore US-Dollar System' has been backstopped by the Federal Reserve's network of swap lines which are extended to other key central banks. This systemic evolution may continue in the decades to come, but other systemic arrangements are possible as well and have historical precedents. This article discusses four trajectories that would lead to different setups of the international monetary system by 2040, taking into account how its hierarchical structure and the role of offshore credit money creation may evolve. In addition to a continuation of USD hegemony, we present the emergence of competing monetary blocs, the formation of an international monetary federation and the disintegration into an international monetary anarchy.

The Convention defining the Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted on 17 July 1998 and opened for signature by the states the next day at the close of a diplomatic conference five weeks, held in Rome in June and July 1998 after a vote requested by the United Nations (Simmons & Danner, 2010). One hundred and twenty states, including France and all the countries of the European Union had voted in favor, seven cons and twenty one abstained. The International Criminal Court (ICC), created by the Rome Convention of 17 July 1998, is a permanent court to punish the most serious crimes against international humanitarian law when criminals can be tried in their country. The purpose of the Court and the Roma Statue is that the Statute of the International Criminal Court determine the jurisdiction of that court and outlines its structure and its functions. It has to come into force sixty days after sixty states have ratified or acceded to (Simmons & Danner, 2010). The seat of the Court in The Hague in the Netherlands. It comprises the President, the room calls, the trial chamber and trial chamber. Eighteen judges perform the functions of that international court. They are elected by the Assembly of States Parties and must be highly skilled in the areas of criminal law and international law and well known for their morality. They must also exercise their functions independently and impartially. As Robinson assumes, the effectiveness of the International Criminal Court to defend and implement the deep needs of mankind depends largely on its power to effectively exercise jurisdiction assigned by their status (2003). Therefore, the question of the exercise of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court was the subject of the most heated discussions and more tense until the last day of the Rome conference.These discussions have resulted in compromise so low that the Court today has a skill that does not fully ensures the existence of an effective international justice. Moreover, the ICC's jurisdiction is quite limited in reality. There are three significant reasons behind the limitations and weaknesses of the ICC. Firstly, the ICC can only know of four categories of offense , considered as the most serious: crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes and crimes of aggression. Secondly, it can only intervene if the crime was committed on the territory of a state that signed the agreement , or if the respondent is a citizen of one of these states. Thirdly, the jurisdiction of the Court is complementary. First of all, Sanjara(2003) explains that the prosecutor, allocated power by the Rome Statute, takes the initiative and engages on its own prosecutions and investigations remained one of the most controversial and critical of the Rome conference. The conference

This paper attempts to critically question present IPE approaches and analyses that aim at assessing China’s role within the international political economy. Thus, unlike common theorizations that see the country as being integrated within US hegemony (Panitch and Gindin) or those accounts that claim that we are already witnessing the “terminal crisis” of US hegemony accompanied by a hegemonic transition toward China (Arrighi), the paper will argue that China was able to gain “relative geopolitical autonomy” as a result of the revolutionary processes it went through and eventually assert itself as a contender state, now just in the process of challenging US hegemony. Dissatisfied with existent theorizations of hegemony, I will be drawing on the critical edition of Gramsci’s Quaderni and attempt to offer a new perspective regarding the conceptualization thereof. Thus applying the elaborated framework of analysis to the current situation, I argue that unlike the US’s ability to counter the challenge of its traditional imperial rivals Germany and Japan as they developed under the grip of US hegemony, the country is facing difficulties in countering China’s ascent. However, while maintaining that China does indeed represent a challenge to US hegemony, particularly in East Asia, I will argue that the idea of a “crisis of US hegemony” is premature as China remains distant from fully realizing hegemonic relations, even at the regional level.

The 2007-2008 global financial crisis which caused the Great Recession in the following year is undoubtedly a pivotal event in the 21st century, as it reveals the deep-rooted flaws of the United States-led global neoliberal system currently in place. Among many held beliefs concerning how the economy works, the crisis particularly highlights the disastrous consequences of a globally integrated economy which enabled the spread of a crisis in one domain (i.e., the 2007 US subprime mortgage market crisis) to the rest of the world economy throughout the financial network. Taking into account the severity of the crisis, it is possible to argue that its damage unfortunately could still be felt more than a decade later.
In examining the consequences of the 2008 economic crisis, this essay will touch upon the underlying neoliberal structure pre- and post-crisis, as well as how the changes are affecting the American hegemonic position at the world stage.

Textbook presentations of U.S. policing name the present as new stage of professionalization: the homeland security era, where the application of “big data” promises “smarter” policing. Within this framework of gradual progress, liberal police scholarship has become the official criticism of big data policing to organize a project of liberal reform. Of course, this scholarship is being in written in the context of both militant social movements within the United States and the terminal decline of U.S. global hegemony. To clarify the stakes of this moment, this paper connects the Marxist anti-security perspective and anti-racist critiques of surveillance and big data policing from within the Black radical tradition. It argues that the emergence of big data policing is the latest development in on-going processes of pacification that have expanded, organized, and reproduced the colonial/modern world-system over the longue durée.  The paper extends and elaborates conceptualizations of hegemonic cycles in relation to work on the maturation of intelligence tradecraft, focusing on two interrelated developments: (1) two information revolutions that reorganized social relations and (2) the police-wars that shaped the rise and decline of the United States as a world hegemonic power. It concludes that big data policing is the latest outgrowth of the imperial epistemology that organized and continues animate the work of pacification and obscure the politics of anti-systemic struggle.