The U.S. Empire's Culture Industry, at Large
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- Published on Tuesday, 03 May 2016 09:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1252 .... May 3, 2016
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The U.S. Empire's Culture Industry, at Large
Tanner Mirrlees
"U.S. Empire's Decline": Spectre or Social Fact?
For readers immersed in the annals of Empire, it is well known that the United States is no ordinary country in the world system. The United States is a unique Empire whose national security strategy since 1945 has relied upon a mix of diplomacy and brute military force to make the world safe for American capitalism around the world, and more importantly, made the world over for global capitalism. Unlike bygone colonial Empires, the U.S. Empire has not in its recent history tried to directly dominate territories, but instead, strove to build, integrate and police a world system of allies that share its model: capitalism, the neoliberal state... form, and the consumerist "way of life."
As of late, though, we read that the U.S. Empire is in relative decline, perhaps even headed toward a full-fledged collapse. The old American Century is supposedly being eclipsed by a new Chinese one. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (the "BRICS") are a bloc emerging to challenge the U.S. Empire. A tectonic shift from a U.S.-unipolar order to multi-polar disorder is happening.
The spectre of decline has haunted the U.S. Empire for as long as scholars and activists have attempted to understand and change it. In 1960, U.S. President John F. Kennedy declared that the "fundamental problem of our time is the critical situation which has been created by the steady erosion of American power relative to that of the Communists in recent years." But it wasn't. In the 1970s, deindustrialization, the horrors of Vietnam, the OPEC crisis, and stagflation set off a powder keg of opinion that the U.S. Empire was finished. But it wasn't. The rise of West German and Japanese capitalism throughout the 1980s and their taking a bite out of the U.S.'s piece of the global economic pie combined with military over-stretch sparked more chatter about America being in trouble. But it wasn't. In the 1990s, neoliberal and postmodern proponents of "globalization" argued that the break-up of the Soviet Union, the consolidation of the European Union and new developments in info and communication technologies heralded a fundamentally new world system that was post-U.S. Empire. But it really wasn't. The Bush Administration's post-9/11 launch of the global war on terror momentarily revived talk of the U.S. being an Empire, and quite a strong one. But then the Global Slump of 2007 sunk in, and declinism once again spun around the planet.
Whether or not the spectre of decline is now a real material force around the world is up for debate, and fortunately, many democratic socialists have made important and astute contributions to it. Now, early into 2016, we read everyone from the neoconservative hawk Charles Krauthammer lamenting the chaotic conditions of a world system marked by "disarray" due to "American decline" to the former U.S. Ambassador Chas W. Freeman Jr. worrying that if Americans fail to "repair the incivility, dysfunction, and corruption of our politics, we will lose our republic as well as our imperium." The rhetoric of decline is nothing new, and it is regularly wielded by the U.S. Empire's opinion-makers to build working class consent for programs to rebuild U.S. power each time elites perceive it to be waning. The imperial messenger Thomas Friedman, for example, teamed up with Council on Foreign Relations member Michael Mandelbaum to make a liberal case for American renewal. And Donald Trump's conservative narrative of decline fills the heads of his acolytes with dreams of Empire-enabled social mobility by promising to "make America great again."
The U.S. Empire is indeed currently beset by serious problems as the world system undergoes real and significant changes. Yet, the declinists of our time risk overlooking the solidity of the U.S. Empire's power relative to would-be contenders, and their flagging of present-day change downplays continuities with the past. For the short term, the U.S. is still the only Empire, and with regard to its combined power -- capitalist, military and communications media -- it is largely unrivalled.