Geopolitics: Reality and Dialectics of the New Cycle of Capital
especiales

The United States is going through a period that could be described as the beginning of the disintegration of its power as a major power. As much as its political class stubbornly denies it, the signs are evident and this has been recognized even by the incoming administration, which has said on several occasions that they no longer inspire the same respect or fear. How to interpret Trump's allusions to the need to gain territories on the continent and the hemisphere? Since the times of Manifest Destiny, there have not been statements in that tone and the case merits analysis from a geopolitical and not an emotional prism.
Since the end of the last century, there have been signs that the logic of growth and expansion of the northern power was reaching a climax point. The aggressions against Iraq and Afghanistan ended in costly occupations that gave way to a crisis in 2008 almost on par with the greatest upheavals. The point is that despite the fact that the nation depends on the empire, the relationship between the two is contradictory. While the standard of living of the inhabitants of the first depends on cheap imports of goods, the second requires constant markets and resources to sustain itself. But the clash between both entities is inevitable. The nation, in its stability, needs wars not to put at risk the safety on the streets, lives and families, the political order and the succession in power. The empire only survives by creating commotions in a globalized world that bring consequences to the nation's interior. This explains an event such as that of the World Trade Center in 2001. When an empire begins to fall it’s because it’s not capable of sustaining its possessions and this affects the security of its external and internal borders. This is what happened with Rome and we see that the same subjugated peoples and seen as barbarians were in charge of burying the old empire.
Geopolitical analysts in the United States have recognized this and have therefore outlined several courses of action, but the political class is not always willing to follow a rational order in its way of understanding the management of the nation and the empire. The lack of cohesion around elements of common interest, the chaotic succession of governments that oppose each other in their internal and external policies, the contrast of conservative and woke cultural agendas are some of the issues that lead the United States to be divided to the point of coexisting one nation within another. Foreign alliances, once a point in favor of American hegemony, have been poorly managed by both parties. Based on market interests and electoral rivalry, mistakes are made and agreements with allies and enemies are cancelled, generating frictions that are then impossible to reverse. Thus, while Obama reached agreements in the Middle East, Biden and Trump fanned the flames of differences and the result is seeable. On the one hand, the Yemenis don’t allow regular oil trade and are playing to increase the price by means of attacks and insecurity at sea. On the other hand, Iran has created proxy conflicts near Israel and plays with a complicated system of allies. Turkey, an old friend of the North Americans, is reeling between the emerging world and its old ties. Iraq, a once occupied nation, is taking an active role in the region again, and not exactly on the side of the West. Afghanistan witnessed the most shameful withdrawal of Washington's military in this century. The list goes on.
Trump's arrival is the turning point as a result of the notorious frauds of the previous administration in domestic and foreign affairs, but that does not mean that things will improve. With the calls to acquire new territories, an internal reality is intended to be hidden, which is becoming a bigger problem. America's once industrial cities are emptying, its manufacturing and GDP-producing economy is in free fall, and the economy is increasingly service-based and import-based, implying a decline in global importance. While China is acquiring dollars and holding the reserves necessary for a financial transition, the United States is buying products and consuming them. Thus, the dependence of the old world on the new world increases, with the geopolitical implications that this entails. Will tariffs against China, Canada or Mexico be able to stop the reality of the impact of globalization on the decline of the United States? For the middle and poor voters, who were the majority who supported the conservative option, the outlook is discouraging. Tariffs raise the prices of consumer goods in the domestic market, because companies try not to make losses and recover them in the future.
The tariff measures initially favor national companies and protect them from competition, but this does not guarantee a quality and cheaper service for the consumer.
To reconnect with the real economy, the United States must control the debt, but the only way to achieve this is by re-boosting industrial production and the export of goods, that is, by being competitive in the world market and conquering spaces based on this push. This was possible in the past and gave the United States hegemony, while other empires such as the British were no longer able to sustain the status of superpower. On the other hand, the printing of money by the Federal Reserve, which is what has been done until now, contributes to creating a floating economy that does not represent a reality of products. This banknote, which is not backed by gold or GDP, is exported and exchanged for goods, and this largely keeps the country's consumer culture safe for the time being. But for how long? The acceleration of a new multipolar world with powers that are capable of living off of financial transactions and trade among themselves and without going through the logic of the West has put the old order in jeopardy. Therefore, it’s a matter of time before a currency appears that is opposed to the dollar and that is accepted in exchange for goods and services, which will displace the exclusivity of this currency market that today governs the value of the entire world. This will initiate the end of hegemony and therefore of the control that is exercised over other peoples and resources.
What partly maintains the dollar order is the power of the Pentagon, which imposes, by force of its external influence, the currencies that favor its interests. But since the wars of the beginning of this century, the United States has seen that it’s more costly and that everything is at risk when it goes directly to an armed conflict, so the tactics have changed. The US has gone from sending in marines to using unconventional combats that combine social networks and intelligence, with cultural warfare, color revolutions and proxy clashes on the borders. This leads to dangerous alliances with mercenaries that then become uncontrollable based on their own interests and that create chaos and bring with them a worsening of the conditions for the empire itself. Thus, the situation with the Ukrainian government is one of the many examples, in which the provocation got out of hand and led to a clash with Russia in which the Western empire finds itself bogged down in the impossibility of reaching agreements, since it does not have the deterrent force or the strategic advantage necessary to achieve it. We see how clumsiness and the refusal to accept the new world have led the United States into problems from which it cannot escape, creating chaos within its political class. All of this translates into ungovernability and worsening stages of its conditions as a power.
The vicious circle is not broken, since it goes from the export of foreign currency and the import of goods, to the increase in debt and the impossibility of keeping foreign and domestic markets. The competition of the United States today is still based on the technological advantage of the Silicon Valley complexes on which cultural power and global influence also rest. The computer giants have made politics revolve around message lines and predictions and in this way the stories are imposed on the world scene. Even so, on the objective level, neither militarily nor economically has it been possible to reverse the tendency of the empire to retreat to its borders. In fact, what’s becoming clear with the threats of expansion to the south and the north is that there’s an attempt to rescue the notion of an influential country for a union of states that could be threatened by its low level of cohesion and the internal crisis that it cannot solve. Social networks, which could be a field for participation and the discovery of common horizons, have been contaminated by business interests and express the clash between power groups based on the reflection and censorship of cultural agendas that are apparently opposed, but which represent the same crisis of the model.
Every empire refuses to die and the first denial comes out in its own imperial discourse. A statement like Make America Great Again hides the recognition that this country has been shrinking in relation to the expectations of its power circles and that it no longer responds to the need for expansion and control as it once did. But the will to power, paraphrasing a commonplace of politics from the last century, is not enough. The old reality becomes unreal and dies. It’s part of the vital cycle of humanity and of dialectic itself. If in the 20th century the USSR was made to fade away before the avalanche of liberalism and the market, in the 21st century, this liberalism no longer expresses the reality of the peoples and of the productive forces themselves, which are developing at another stage of their development. The geopolitical analysts who publish their predictions know this, but those who make the decisions and turn up their noses at expansionism at a time when such a thing is not possible and would be counterproductive, knowingly ignore it.
Because what would be the most praiseworthy and organic alternative in the face of a situation of imperial disintegration? Preserving the security of the nation. That is, urgent measures must be taken to ensure international cooperation and support for alliances so that the blow of the fall is cushioned for a few more decades while forces are sought within the domestic order to restore part of that power. It’s not the will to power that creates power, but historical reality. It is not whims that govern international macroeconomic movements, but the market dynamics and the financial logic that accompanies resources. In other words, what the United States should have done is an economy that creates opportunities to attract investors and generate jobs, which redistributes debt in the form of salaries and creates taxes necessary to maintain the welfare state. But instead of that, a cultural war has been waged in which arguments of the extinct confrontation with the East are put forward and this gives way to decisions against the interests of industrial capital, real growth and the creation of value. To protect part of the business community from competition from new investors, that investment is halted and tariffs are placed on its entry in the form of goods. But this is based on the creation of a speculative economy of prices that is more difficult for the common person to navigate and therefore puts the flare on the living conditions of the nation. Once again there’s no other option but to turn to the empire to sustain itself and this results in a cost in prestige, security and international alliances.
The most certain thing is that the empire will flee forward and continue printing worthless currency until the debt is unsustainable and its value as a commodity falls. This can create a shock even in emerging and strong economies like China, which is why the creation of an organization like BRICS also has to do with the cushioning of said crash. Every time an empire has fallen there has been a great war and then a restart or reset. The cycles of concentration and expansion of capital can be harmful to everyone when the powers that be refuse to accept dialectical reality and confuse their desires with what’s possible in political matters. We have seen this in the two previous world wars.
Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff
Add new comment