GLOBAL IMPERIALISM AND NATION-STATES
Olga Fernández Ríos
Instituto de Filosofia, Habana, Cuba

INTRODUCTION

We live in times characterized by some as an era of a rabid capitalist globalization in which the centers of the world power, while they try to minimize the role and the autonomy of the national states located in the South of the planet, use these as means to consolidate the devastating advance of the capitalist market with its negative consequences for two thirds of humanity. At the same time the thesis proliferates that the nation state loses its importance as there exist international regulatory agencies charged with designing the domestic policies.

Another element present in the analysis of this subject is tied to the multiple contradictions that exist in the contemporary world that are consequences derived from capitalism and from the myth that considers it the only legitimate mode of production for the entire planet, in spite of it having generalized social exclusion, poverty, the ruination of natural resources, violence and political corruption. These deformations caused by capitalist society have been joined by additional phenomena that affect the relations between countries, as there is, for example, terrorism.

This has become the fundamental pretext that the principal imperialist power of the world wields in order to exercise its influence in any country under the supposedly objective pretext of liberating the world from this sore which is deliberately attributed only to less developed countries. The nation-states of the South are also affected by the North American interventionism in their internal affairs exercised through a variety of means that include war as an instrument of coercion and domination, and declared legitimate. They are also affected because of the high rates of earnings by important oligarchical Yankee sectors. The military budget of the United States, that was already high, has grown in the last three years by more than 20%. The military rhetoric that accompanies the center of global imperialism turns even more cynical when the new North-American interventionism justifies itself in the name of civilization and as God’s command.

In our judgment, the nation-states, inclusive of the less developed ones, have the right
to seek their own solution to the existing situations. These states continue to have a cardinal importance which, in many instances, is reinforced by the fact that they are territorial and cultural places where important searches for alternatives to capitalism
and struggles for a more just and equitable world are taking place.

The theme we analyze here is complex and impossible to exhaust in so few pages.
We only propose to engage in some reflections – fundamentally from the Latin American and Caribbean perspective which, we think, will make a contribution to the debate. For that purpose we are arranging our ideas in four fundamental categories:

- Some reflections about global imperialism and nation-states.
- The removal of national sovereignty from the so-called peripheral states as an instrument of global imperialist domination.
- New North American formulas for justifying the imperialist domination by
global imperialism.
- About some alternatives to the reigning order.

SOME REFLECTIONS ABOUT GLOBAL IMPERIALISM AND NATION-STATES.

Actually existing capitalism maintains the logic of development analyzed by Karl Marx which includes the expansionism of the bourgeoisie denounced with foresight in the Communist Manifesto: the bourgeoisie…”forces all nations, if they do not want to succumb, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production, and to introduce the so-called civilization, that is to say, to become bourgeois. In one word, it forges a world in its
image and likeness”.

The expansionist and imperialist character of capitalism, denounced at the end of the XIXth and at the beginning of the XXth centuries by Jose Marti and Vladimir Lenin, has been consolidated in our days by means of formulas that go beyond the export of capital, colonialism and neo-colonialism.

Like never before, capitalism has grown worldwide, or, expressed differently, there exists a global imperialism that affects and involves the immense majority of humankind. This imperialism has become consolidated, based upon the predominance of the market and the growing social exclusion that prejudices not only those human beings dispossessed of the “advantages” of private property, but also those countries that, being considered second category, are hindered in reaching the development and strength of the imperialist powers that each time decrease in number.

Imperialism has turned into a world system of economic and political dominion that deepens more and more the asymmetry and inequality among the nations in accordance with a dominant trinity integrated by the United States, Europe and Japan, but with a strong tendency on the part of the United States towards monopolizing world power
on the part of the United States, a tendency that has today already turned regular.

Let us not forget that that country did not have a feudal development, but that it was born as a capitalist nation and grew in three steps to become an imperialist one by
1) conquering and usurping territories by force to enlarge considerably the settlements of the 13 English colonies which became the origin of the country. Without wasting time, they snatched up neighboring enclaves, taking the lands from the indigenous peoples that had settled in North America for centuries, as well as from other countries;
2) turning into an imperial power of the hemisphere during the XXth century, gaining control over Latin America and the Caribbean, and
3) since the end of WWII until up to our days the United States has been building itself up as the center of imperialism with a growing control of the world market,
and finding support through interference in the internal affairs of other states..

Through usurpation, interventionism and a remarkable lack of political ethics the United States has succeeded in forming a transnational economic and political dominion. As the center of global imperialism it has developed a net or system of multiple domination that can count with various political and ideological mechanisms to complement the overwhelming power of the market and that affects and substantially limits the actual development of the countries of the South.

It is not an idle thought to recall that the national states are temporally and organically tightly connected with the rise and the expansion of the capitalist markets. There is an intimate connection between the rise of the nation-state and the original capitalism
At the same time, the nations were affected by the development of capitalism and by the interests that have guided its expansion.

Within the framework of this century-long conditioning, the nation-states found their consolidation, different peoples of different geographical latitudes have come together, and in the lap of these geo-political enclaves, historical and cultural values have affirmed themselves along with defining national identities and socio-political interests which
legitimize the right to national sovereignty. All these elements have been decisive in the struggles against colonialism and for independence, as well as in the definition of the international regulatory mechanisms in order to protect the integrity of the nations and world peace.

In the present actuality the nation-states are the spaces where the ties between the state, the market, the national, the class and the international elements flow together, and where
important anti-capitalist struggles have been carried out in order to arrest the negative effects caused by global imperialism and neo-liberalism and experienced by two-thirds of humankind. Moreover, the spaces are of great importance where socio-political and revolutionary movements develop in order to achieve a better world.

On the other hand, the principal centers of the trans-nationalized market are situated in
countries that are the center of the political power of the world, headed by the United States of North America. At the same time the economically less developed nations are forced to involve themselves in the complex net of this market.

But the connections and inter-relations between the national and the trans-national become much more complex when the United States tries to impose a single model of development, and with it a single model of the capitalist state, as it tries at the same time to ratify its hegemony over the nation-states for which it shows itself as a model of regulatory mechanisms and of control. This is also what allows the United States to exercise its hegemony.

For the world, the United States designs the patterns of production, financing and consumption through a network of productive, commercial and financial relations that serve to model the whole of society based upon the logic of capitalism. It promotes a single thought and each time it increases its actions against the search of alternatives and diverse opinions designed to achieve economic development and social justice.

THE STRIPPING OF NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY FROM THE STATES OF THE SO-CALLED PERIPHERY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF DOMINATION BY GLOBAL IMPERIALISM.

It is without dispute that in the conditions of global imperialism changes and restructuring have been produced in the functions of the state which, although they do not alter its classist nature, do however imply changes in the correlation of its internal elements with negative consequences for society as a whole.

It is not the first time that something like this occurs, but it is the first time that this manifests itself all over the planet as a whole and as regulated by a great power.
Differing from other stages, including other moments of imperialism proper, where
the state formulated policies taking into account the national interest, policies are defined today in subordination to the interests of the great transnational companies who have their territorial enclaves within the imperialist powers.

In relation to the nation-state today, we distinguish two quite differentiated poles: the imperialist countries that many authors call the “Center”, and the under-developed
ones that are considered the “periphery”. The situation is not the same at both of these
poles. In our analysis we will focus on the so-called periphery, and in particular on our continent, with specifics derived from the North American external politics directed
at this region.

In quite a generalized form in Latin America and the Caribbean, the state has suffered modifications in the exercise of its traditional functions starting from a major disequilibrium between the repressive function of an extraordinary power, and the functions directed towards carrying out the public policies, which each time become more stretched and discolored.

The most significant change is given, above all, by the upset the United States causes to the sovereignty and autonomy of the nation-states of the Latin American and Caribbean
periphery.

Today, national sovereignty ceases to be an attribute of the state and a regulatory source of the common national interest, turning into an instrumental puppet in the service of the great capital and the globalized market, all aspects that some authors have considered
as modifying the nature of the state. In this regard, the Egyptian political scientist
Samir Amin introduces the concept of “market-states”, in which all the functions, including the coercive power, are in favor of the forces interested in capitalism, which by its very nature, is supra-national. In this way the United States pretends to utilize the nation-states only to balance the “grand politics” and the “micro-politics”, imposing a logic in accordance with a great power.

In our judgment, the loss of national sovereignty also changes sensibly democratic foundations and mechanisms, a situation that manifests itself in the high indices of discontent that exist in Latin America in relation to the reigning democracy in that region, and the lack of credibility in this form of government. The loss of national sovereignty changes considerably at least three functions of the state:
a) The configuration of its own policies: as part of the neo-liberal politics, in the generality of the countries of that region, the states do not design their own economic policies, not even of a bourgeois-capitalist kind, but they are obligated to apply those developed by others. The national sovereignty is constantly violated through institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, ALCA, among other mechanisms created for the international economic design and control.
b) The definition of the forms of government: the national states do not design either
mechanisms of government, but they see themselves forced to assume a model defined as democracy that is entirely imported and emptied of the principle attributes that correspond to a democratic government and the political organization of society.
c) Also the ideological function of the state is affected by the neo-liberal ideology
which models an ideological-cultural pattern exported to the Latin American countries and the Caribbean and which go beyond the classical bourgeois design. Thus an emptying of what is authentic is produced, a distancing from the national traditions, even regional ones, in order to provide room for a culture of imperial domination, cultivating ideas involving the inevitability of capitalism, of North American superiority and the “advantages of the market.”

One of the major effects suffered by the countries of the periphery is the growing loss of the capacity to reproduce the national culture and those elements that imprint continuity and the richness of tradition.

What is even more serious is the fact that the concept of people is affected so that it begins to get lost in order to be occupied by the concept of multitude or population. When the cultural interests and identities are substituted by extra-territorial macro-interests the “popular” comes to be the most devalued, remaining only as a space perhaps for recreation, folklore, or for electoral rhetoric. This is a theme which deserves to be brought up. One shall not forget that with the influence and the interest of the United States, countries, cultural and national identities have become fragmented and have promoted violent local wars.

In the three directions of the loss of sovereignty and national independence mentioned, the importation of attributes of the state brings with it new molds that rob the traditional state of the traditional search for palliatives to heal social inequalities. In this way the scorn for the public interest, the interest in society and the popular sectors grows in power, public policies become privatized and cease to be a priority or at least they might appear to be a function of the state.

What some authors consider to be the downsizing of the state in the countries of the periphery is nothing else but the absolute loss of the responsibility of the state in relation to education, public health, social security, the protection of the natural resources, and of everything that contributes to foment a minimal equilibrium the state must achieve so that society can function with a certain normality.

NEW NORTH AMERICAN FORMULAS TO JUSTIFY IMPERIALIST DOMINATION OVER THE NATION-STATES OF THE “PERIPHERY”.

In order to achieve world hegemony, the United States coordinates alliances and competitive relations; it represses in any part of the planet what it considers to be a threat to the great capital; it favors inter-state agreements, it regulates the logic of capital from the point of view of its interests and connects the internal markets to the global one.

The centers of developed capitalism maintain themselves through a global economic order that allows them to extract the wealth and to feed the underdevelopment of the rest of the planet. The system works so that the market can be the principal regulatory element, and that preserving and favoring it be among the principal functions of the nation-states. One cannot ignore that the logic of the market functions based upon the possibilities the state creates for it, even at the cost of loosing its sovereignty.

Although the nature of the sources of power have come to be changed in the direction of factors such as technology, education and economic growth, although the great capitalist powers draw the benefit from the economic world order and have succeeded in establishing international norms and institutions that are in tune with and are consistent with their interests, in the present epoch there is a dramatic increase in the use of military power.

With the end of the Cold War and the sharpening of the financial and structural crisis of capitalism, and with a certain loss of legitimacy for its policies, the United States, in a precarious alliance with its minor partners, has gone to use more expensive coercive
methods of power.

It is the United States that pressures and invades countries, and that designs mechanisms of political and military domination through its specialized agencies and regional organisms, or especially directed towards the countries of the South. (remember ALCA,
Plan Columbia, Plan Puebla Panama, Helms Burton, Haiti, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq,
among many).

In the last years, and especially after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, 2001, the government of the United States has developed different plans with the pretext of protecting national security. Some authors connected with neo-conservatism maintain that these attacks forced the United States to think about a new external policy and at the same time they welcomed the opportunity to explain to the American people why it is necessary to engage in a serious commitment to the external world.

The new strategy of national security made public in September 2002 follows this reasoning and self-authorizes unlimited powers to this country for the control of the
world in the name of the North American interests. This presupposes the assumption of the right to define which countries need American intervention, even armed intervention, and to legitimize any interference in the internal affairs of many countries.

Two new concepts stand out to identify countries of the periphery that “need to be tamed” -- rogue states, and failed states-- and at the same time the habit was established of making lists of countries that fall under this category.

The rogue states are those that may have or try to obtain weapons of mass destruction, or that constitute a threat to the interests of the United States by dissenting with the international policy that this country has designed. The rogue states are seen capable of promoting terrorist actions. Failed states are those that have elements that cannot be governed by the state which condition could lead them to become rogue states, and as such they are also a threat that must be eliminated.

In accordance with the North American logic, the condition of “not being able to be governed” can consist of different causes, among which are the following: popular revolts or the existence of zones of turbulence against the state; or because of the breakdown of the power of the state in sections of that country; or when international agents feel forced to abandon the country; or because of the absence of legitimacy or authority of the government to manage internal affairs, or because of the loss of monopoly over the national security services. It is also put forward that the absence of legitimate authority can happen because of the existence of corrupt ruling officials or because of an arbitrary definition of the national frontiers which would legitimize the reconfiguration of those states based on this reason.

In addition to elevating itself as an evaluator of the existence of the condition of governability and of intervening in the internal affairs of countries for a supposed control of the situation, the United States gives itself the right to reconstruct these states after abolishing their regimes and to qualify those states as ungovernable that disagree with its policies as it happens in the case of Cuba and Venezuela, among others.

The new concepts coined by the “Bush doctrine” are instruments that legitimize the new North American interventionism and the interference with the internal affairs of other states, and the imposition of political rules that shall govern the entire planet. Although in the majority of cases this new interventionism presents itself as a “liberating mission”, or a “humanitarian mission”, it is not a way to eliminate poverty and misery in which the majority of humanity lives, nor for braking the degradation of the environment caused by capitalism itself. On the contrary: it deepens the social inequality and the gap that exists today between rich and poor countries.

ARE THERE ALTERNATIVES?

Under the conditions of a global imperialism, the interaction between the question of class and the national has deepened as never before. This is expressed in the unequal growth of the gap between rich and poor on two levels: towards the interior of the countries and among the countries considered as of the center or of the periphery. The predominant logic from the side of the imperialist vision is that of a social and national exclusion as regulatory elements of the market and of the international relations. It is for this reason the search for alternatives passes along those two levels.

This situation makes it so that today the class struggles are very much tied to anti-imperialist struggles, and happen for the rescue of national sovereignty. Any conquest that favors the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist struggle within the framework of nation-states is at the same time a step towards the disconnection from the system of global imperialism. It is outdated and counterproductive to offer prescriptions for change or pretend to coin a predetermined societal model. At the same time one has to keep in mind that all anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggles contribute to the search for alternatives that might lead to a better world than the one we have now.

We are interested in stressing some ideas in this regard:

1. To achieve a more just and equitable world that overcomes the conditions imposed by a global imperialism, it is necessary to rescue national sovereignty and the self-determination of nations.

2. Today, popular resistance not only obeys classist or sectarian interests. It is also proposed to search for reclaiming the nation and for a growing reaffirmation of national identity. One of the more interesting examples in that respect is that the notion of territoriality of the peasants and the indigenous peoples in a variety of Latin American countries goes hand in hand with the confrontation of extra-territorial mechanisms such as the ALCA or the Free Trade Agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States. The same happens in the struggles against privatizations, an extension of the general rejection of the policies of the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and the World Bank, among others, and the opposition to North American interventionism.

3. Even if the classical configuration in relation to the earlier stages of capitalism and imperialism has changed, and the so called social movements or new social agents occupy the first line in the struggles for a new society, the most important element is that today almost the entire world has great reasons for being discontent with capitalism, something that before was centered fundamentally in the working class.

4. The examples of Cuba and Venezuela confirm the ties between the struggles for social justice and the elimination of the socio-economic differences within the framework of the nation-state and the struggles for sovereignty and national independence. In these countries, the popular resistance is decisive and generalized, and it confronts actions promoted from Washington that pretend, in the first case, to subvert the disconnection of Cuba from the orbit of global imperialism, and in the second puts brakes to the anti-imperialist advance of the Bolivarian Revolution.

5. The struggles and protests of the progressive sectors of the imperialist countries, and especially of the United States have an extra-ordinary importance, be it in order to confront the internal inequalities that exist in these countries, or to oppose an external policy based on aggression and the motive of global dominion. In particular the anti-war struggles, those directed towards achieving more just international policies, and those that promote solidarity with the countries of the South, and with governments or revolutionary movements interested in a society that is more just, are of incalculable value.

6. Alternative forums, be these world-wide or regional; alternative means of
spreading information; informal networks are important links in the anti-imperialist struggles and in the promotion of a necessary process of unity among the progressive forces. They also express new forms of internationalism in accordance with the actually existing conditions of proliferation of social actors
interested in reaching a more just and equitable society.

The great social transformations derived from the capitalist model of production have reached limits above those analyzed by Marx and Engels more than 150 years ago. They envisioned the possibility of socialism as a social alternative to capitalism and they worked out interesting conclusions than still have extraordinary force and validity.

In my opinion, socialism continues being the alternative to capitalism, and it has become necessary to rethink this option from its original sources up, while keeping in mind the positive and negative experiences that have existed in the processes towards the establishment of such a society. The necessity to listen closely to the realities of each country and to interpret the historical, social, cultural and international contexts constitute the decisive premises for
socialism.

The strategic and tactical transformations will have necessarily a revolutionary character, generated in national and regional contexts that bring to bear on this process the originality and creativity according to the historical and cultural values of each scenario.

The contradictions capitalism has generated on the social and national level
exist now in the entire world. Thus, the centers of resistance can be generalized,
and increased in a kind of chain-reaction in which every link is of importance. Each movement that struggles within the confines of a nation-state against the order imposed by the world, plays an important role.

Today it is possible to envision a multiplication of national scenarios in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism. Thus the order of battle which Ernesto Che Guevara proclaimed in 1965 in his “Message to the Three Continents” (“Mensaje a la Tricontinental”) to “ create two, three, many Viet Nams” seems to acquire force in a new historical context. The road is long, but it is a road that has already begun. It is not utopia, but even if it were, let us remember that many realities of today have at some moment been utopias.

Translation by Otto Begus