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From 20th century to 2nd/Kloc-0th century, which watercolor painters returned from studying in China?
However, a mid-term election at the end of 2006 unexpectedly allowed the Democratic Party to regain control of the Senate and the House of Representatives under the banner of anti-war, breaking the monopoly of * * * and party power on the administrative, legislative and judicial machinery. The mainstream media all over the world want to know what adjustments will be made to American foreign policy once the Democratic Party wins the 2008 presidential election. In what way will the Democratic government end the Iraq war, which is extremely unpopular at home and abroad?
However, the mainstream media often pay too much attention to democracy and the dramatic struggle between the two parties, and pay less attention to the deeper background behind the US decision to send troops to Iraq. In this absence, the media will have wishful expectations that once the Democratic Party is in power, the world will be at peace. But as long as we observe carefully, it is not difficult to find out whether it was John who challenged Bush in 2004. Kerry, or a politician like Hillary Clinton who has a good chance to represent the Democratic Party in the 2008 general election, has never dared to deny the Iraq war. They stressed that there is no mistake in principle in the Iraq war itself, but there is something wrong with the specific strategy of the Bush administration.
1956, American sociologist C. Wright Mills, who was deeply influenced by Marx and Weber, published the book "elite of the powerful", pointing out that the political and social power in the United States at that time was highly concentrated in the hands of a group of elites, who controlled the state administrative power, the army and large enterprises respectively. The members of this elite group are connected by in-laws, social relations and even a close network of secret clubs. This small group has strong financial resources and extensive contacts. Although American voters have votes, it is often difficult for democracy, disputes between the two parties, and policy choices presented to voters to go beyond the boundaries drawn by this group. Mills, therefore, believes that the interests of this clique are the key forces that affect the major domestic and foreign policies of the United States. On the surface, voters are the masters of the country, but in fact, their lives are firmly controlled by a "military-industrial complex" and its political agents.
After the book was published, it gave a reasonable explanation for the inexplicable anti-white terror that fell from the sky during McCarthy's period in the 1950s in the United States. In the 1960s, the Vietnam War escalated under the strong opposition of the people. At that time, the Democratic Party was consistent with the Kuomintang on the Vietnam War issue, which disappointed many supporters of the anti-war Democratic Party. Therefore, Mills' theory of strong elite has been more widely spread. This book sold well in 1950s and 1960s, and quickly became a classic of American social science in the 20th century.
During the general election in 2004, some media found that the two seemingly incompatible presidential candidates were extremely well-organized and mysterious when they were studying at Yale University, and only 15 new members of Yale skull and bones were appointed every year. According to the reporter's records, in previous years, skull and bones's members also included five major government officials promoted by George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, as well as many entrepreneurs, senior generals and the Director of the Secret Service. When the reporter asked George W. Bush and John Kerry how their membership in skull and bones influenced their worldview and helped them climb the power ladder quickly, they all refused to answer in unison on the grounds that their members had vowed to keep everything in skull and bones secret. The discovery of skull and bones by the media aroused the public's attention to the oligarchic elite group spanning democracy, * * * and the two parties, and then reconsidered the question of "Who rules the United States".
In the following two years, the Iraq war escalated and worsened in the rising war-weariness and opposition of the American people. The people's sense of powerlessness caused by this makes the book "Powerful Elite" once again become a hot topic in the media and academic circles on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. The New York Times, Contemporary Sociology and other newspapers organized special topics to discuss the contemporary significance of this book. Many commentators lamented that after the impact of civil rights movement and various social movements in the United States, the power structure of the country has not improved much compared with 1956. Interestingly, "elite of power" was once again expensive in Luoyang, which touched the nerves of the elites. Even Playboy, a "high-end" pornographic magazine aimed at upper-middle-class male readers, rarely participates in academic debates, publishing articles criticizing Mills for spreading conspiracy theories and undermining public trust in the organizational system.
According to Mills' thinking, we should explore why the United States attacked Iraq in 2003 and where the war will go. We should not be limited to the superficial factors such as people's support for the war and the attitudes of the two major political parties, but should deeply explore the long-term political and economic background behind this war and how this background can guide American elites to wage war at any cost.
In the spring of 2003, when the Iraq war just started, the edmund walsh School of Foreign Affairs of Georgetown University, which has always been the cradle of American diplomats, invited three generations of scholars from the world system school (including wallerstein, Aariki, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Ravi Palat, Peter Gowan, Farouk tabak, etc. ) Explore the future of American hegemony from the perspective of the triangular relationship between the United States, Europe and Asia. After the meeting, many authors revised their papers on the latest development of the situation, especially the discussion on the Iraq war. These papers were published in 2005 (as allies of rivals: American, European and Japanese publishing houses in the changing paradigm of the world system). The book's broad vision provides us with many new inspirations for thinking about the direction of the Iraq war.
Each chapter of the book has a specific theme, but the contents of each chapter echo each other, which makes the book present a distinct theme, that is, since the 1970s, the political and economic strength of the United States has been declining relative to Europe and Asia; The recent Iraq war was a gamble by the American power elite to reverse this almost irreversible trend.
In 1970s, American hegemony was teetering in the oil crisis, economic recession and the failure of Vietnam War. Wallerstein, the founder of the world system school, pointed out that the United States was entering the hegemonic decline stage experienced by the Netherlands in the early18th century and Britain in the early 20th century by investigating the long-term laws of the capitalist system since16th century. This school was once considered to be the most capable political and social theory to capture the general trend of the world. In the late 1980s, the United States won the Cold War. In the 1990s, the continued prosperity driven by the Internet bubble made people feel that the United States was brilliant again, even stronger than before. The American decline theory, represented by the world system theory, was once regarded as outdated and gradually ignored.
But in fact, behind the scenery of the United States in the 1990 s, the trend of national decline has not stopped. At that time, under the leadership of France and Germany, Europe accelerated integration, carried out monetary integration, and even put the construction of an independent military system on the agenda, which greatly weakened the influence of the United States in Atlantic affairs. The rise of China, the decline of Japanese economy and the alienation between South Korea and the United States pose a threat to the layout of the Pacific region dominated by the United States through Japan and South Korea. At the same time, EU member states and Asian countries have begun to make eyes at the oil-producing countries in the Middle East. Oil majors who don't want to continue to rely too much on the American umbrella are also happy to be polite to these emerging forces. At that time, Iraq, which was still sanctioned by the United Nations but had a lot of oil resources, managed to win over Germany and France, and later promised to settle oil exports in euros instead of dollars. This move was successfully exchanged for Germany and France to support the United States to lift sanctions against Iraq.
If Saddam succeeded in setting a precedent at that time, other oil countries might follow suit and consider changing all or part of their exports into euros to reduce their dependence on the US dollar. If the dollar loses its unique position in the world oil market, countries around the world may shift their foreign exchange reserves to other currencies such as the euro to varying degrees. Since 1980s, the American economy has been plagued by expanding fiscal deficit and trade deficit, and its industrial competitiveness has gone from bad to worse. The reason why the United States can remain prosperous depends entirely on its ability to borrow from foreign countries on a large scale by virtue of the exclusive status of the US dollar. Once the dollar is no longer monopolized, the dominant position of American economy and American enterprises in the world economy will be hit hard immediately.
American elites take these trends into account, and of course they will worry about the national situation of being strong outside but weak inside. Neoconservatives, who were still in opposition in the 1990s, set up a think tank called "American New Century Plan" at the beginning of 1997, which provided a prescription for the perpetuation of American hegemony. The members of this organization include Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld who later became the backbone of Bush's diplomatic and military team, corporate giant steve forbes and Bush's brother, which can be described as superstars. Their in-depth study of resources leads to the conclusion that if 2 1 century is still the century of the United States, but not the century of others, the United States should strengthen its control over oil resources in the Middle East and implement the policy of controlling Europe with oil and Asia with oil.
Their ideas expressed explicitly or implicitly in numerous comments and policy research reports are very clear. The United States does not have the capital to confront the newly rising Europe and Asia, but as long as the United States can rebuild its absolute control over the oil-producing areas in the Middle East and cut off the new network of relations between Europe and Asia in this region, it will be difficult for its competitors in the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean to really rise, and finally it can only continue to sneer at the United States. Since the oil crisis in the 1970s, the authoritarian governments of oil-producing countries, which often bargain with the United States by cutting production, are no longer the most reliable allies of the United States in the Middle East. If the United States wants to realize its plan of controlling the world with oil, it must establish a new country in the Middle East that is completely controlled by the United States and has huge oil resources. Pushing down the Iraqi government and rebuilding it were the best levers to realize this plan at that time.
The main members of the "New American Century Plan" have spared no effort to promote the occupation of Iraq since the 1990s. According to their view, if the United States wants to rebuild Iraq, it must use all kinds of extreme means, and the American economy and reputation may have to pay a great price for it. But once successful, the United States will be extremely profitable. In other words, the Iraq war is a huge gamble related to whether the United States can turn over in the decline of "family wealth".
It is no exaggeration to say that the Iraq war is a gamble. The war was supported by foreign debts from the first day. Before the war, the hawk made it clear that after the United States successfully established a new democracy and oil-rich pro-American family in the hinterland of the Middle East, the international reputation of the US dollar would be greatly enhanced, and the world market would be flooded with cheap oil directly led by the United States. By then, the deficit problem in the United States will be solved. This gambler mentality of the Bush team explains why they turned a deaf ear to twin deficits, the largest in American history, and instead devoted all their energy to a war that caused the deficit to soar.
From this point of view, the debate between Germany, France and other European countries and the United States about the Iraq war in early 2003 was actually not a dispute of ideas, but a contest between the dollar and the euro, and between the powerful groups behind the two monetary systems. At that time, the United States was bent on attacking Iraq and quickly overthrew and arrested Saddam Hussein, who was increasingly pro-European, which was undoubtedly a heavy blow to Germany and France. Now that the US military is mired in ethnic conflicts and anti-American guerrilla warfare in Iraq, Germany and France will certainly not help the United States as they did in the war in Afghanistan and the post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan, but are willing to look at it from the other side.
In 2003, powerful groups in the United States mobilized the whole country to support the invasion of Iraq through the lies that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and the patriotic warmth that lingered after 911. However, when the lies were exposed and the war reached a deadlock, the American people were deeply disturbed by the soaring number of American casualties and the pressure brought to the national treasury by the war. Many soldiers who go through fire and water in Iraq for the grand strategy of the powerful groups are poor children from the interior of the United States. They are attracted by the various preferential treatments of the military because they have no money to go to college or lack job opportunities. Their lives are increasingly threatened, which makes them unreservedly support Bush's parents and gradually question the war. When George W. Bush launched a war to cut taxes for the rich, more and more people realized that the elite did not have to pay any price for this war. The financial burden brought by this gamble to the United States must be made up by further cutting social welfare, medical care and education expenditures.
The aversion of major European countries and the American people to the Iraq war shows that this war is by no means a "Western" war, nor an "American" war, but a war only belonging to the American elite. Judging from the current situation, there is little chance for the United States to win this gamble. But the more you lose, the more you gamble, and the bigger you gamble. This is a typical gambler's behavior. After the Republican Party suffered a crushing defeat in the recent mid-term elections, Bush did not really listen to the voice of voters and lacked the sincerity to solve the Iraq issue through diplomatic rather than military means. On the contrary, he can't wait to send more troops to Iraq, ready to escalate the war. The new Congress, which is highly anticipated by anti-war voters, has been at its wit's end except for a strong verbal protest against the troop increase plan.
If the United States can escape the gamble of this century, the world may enter a relatively stable but extremely unfair single imperial order. If the United States follows the current development trend and loses all its money in this gamble, a full-scale civil war will break out in Iraq, and it will be difficult for other oil-producing countries in the region not to be involved, triggering a wider regional conflict. I am afraid that no geopolitical force has the ability and will to save the mess caused by this for some time. Everyone must know what kind of blow will be brought to the world economy if the oil-producing areas are caught in a protracted melee.
Coincidentally, when the world system scholars discussed the trend of American national strength at the conference introduced earlier, David Hafei, a famous social geographer, also gave a series of speeches at Oxford University in the spring of 2003 before the outbreak of the Iraq war to explore the possible trend of the United States in the 2 1 century. The contents of this series of speeches were published at the end of the same year under the title of "New Imperialism" (Oxford University Press).
Hafei's explanation of the Iraq war is strikingly consistent with the views of the above-mentioned scholars in the world system. He believes that the Iraq war is a means for the United States to tighten control over the oil supply in the Middle East. The purpose of tightening control of oil supply is to plug the throats of Europe and Asia (especially China), thus continuing the monopoly position of the United States. However, Hargreaves also made a special supplement to this view: attacking Iraq is not the beginning of the continuation of American hegemony by American elites; Direct control of the world oil supply is not the only way for them to achieve this goal.
The globalization policy initiated by Reagan administration in 1980s and carried forward by Clinton in 1990s is also an important link for the United States to rebuild its global hegemony. A series of financial and economic difficulties that American government and enterprises have encountered since 1970s are largely related to the competition from Europe, Asia and other emerging economies. Through its great influence in major international economic organizations, the U.S. government coerced and lured various booming emerging economies to open their markets (especially financial markets) in the 1980s and 1990s, enabling U.S. transnational capital to enter these economies for profit. The rising economy has also changed from an American competitor to an important source of wealth for the American elite.
It seems to be a win-win game that the United States provides capital for emerging economies and then shares their profits. However, the financial crisis that broke out in different regions in the 1990s showed that the large-scale transnational flow of American capital was actually a zero-sum game in which American capital made huge profits by intentionally or unintentionally sacrificing emerging economies. Under the financial globalization, American capital often enters a specific emerging country on a large scale at a specific time, and then is systematically exaggerated and touted by the western media, making the country's housing prices, stock prices, exchange rates and so on hot. When the prices of these assets peak, transnational capital tends to cash out in lightning speed. After international capital fled quickly to win huge profits, the original emerging countries will have a pile of houses, stocks and exchange rates. At this time, the transnational capital that fled at the beginning will return and use a small part of the previous huge profits to buy assets that local consortia and governments are eager to sell at low prices.
From the Mexican peso crisis in 1994 to the Asian financial crisis in 1997- 1998, and then to the Argentine financial crisis in 20001year, this drama of transnational capital inflow, outflow and return has been repeating itself. Although most of these hit economies have recovered after the return of capital, the control of important sectors of their national economy often falls into the hands of American capital in the storm of crisis and recovery. Hargreaves therefore called this process "deprivation of accumulation". This is similar to 16 and 18 century, when Marx's European emerging bourgeoisie plundered all over the world to complete primitive accumulation of capital.
The neoliberalism pursued by the United States in the world economy in the past two decades, like the neoconservative policy represented by the Iraq war, is a strategy of American elites to suppress the rise of emerging countries and rebuild the dominant position of the United States in the world. American capital abandons its own economic stage and speculates everywhere in the global economy, which of course brings considerable profits to wealthy investors. But at the same time, the American people have to face the consequences of hollowing out industries, disappearing local jobs and falling wages.
This strategy is actually a gamble. When American capital enters which emerging market, when it exits and when it returns often depends on the bold judgment of a single capital. Timing calculation will never be 100% accurate. Occasionally, these abundant capitals will be shattered in the big waves of financial speculation. Many of these transnational capitals carry the pensions, children's education tombs and even life savings of countless Americans. Once they capsize, America's financial stability will also be threatened. The Asian financial turmoil in the 1990s once spread to Brazil, Russia and other financial markets, and even American financial tycoon Soros finally suffered heavy losses. Although the situation has not evolved into the global financial collapse that many people are worried about, it is enough to highlight the risks brought by financial globalization. Many commentators have begun to guess where the next financial storm will break out, and are worried about whether the world economy can develop a more stable global financial order before it is completely destroyed by a more destructive financial crisis.
In a word, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 did not mark the great revolution of American foreign policy as many people thought. In the long run, George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and the globalization promoted by Reagan in the 1980 s are also big bets for the American elite to try to reverse the downward trend of national strength. If they win, they will be the biggest winners. But if they lose everything, the American people and even the whole world will pay a heavy price for the large-scale war and the world economic crisis they brought.
Please adopt it.
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