For José Luis Fiori
The weekend trip of Obama's family to Brazil, will go down in history as a tourist event Rio de Janeiro, and an international goodness, had it not coincided with the nuclear disaster in Japan, and the start of the aerial bombardment of Libya. In particular, because the U.S. decision to attack the North African countries, was taken in Brazil, just before the dinner that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a U.S. delegation This decision served to remind all those in a hurry, the U.S. remain the only world power with "right" to decide - anywhere, anytime - with the possibility of an immediate military intervention in any conflict around the world. A timely reminder, since it has become commonplace in the media and academia - left and right - talk about the decline of American power, while there is an accumulation of evidence otherwise.
After 1991, especially after the end of the Soviet Union, Europe is no longer the center of gravity of the international system, which was across the Atlantic. And at the same time, the U.S. became the "head" of a new type of "global power." A colonial empire is not, has no formal structure, and has flexible boundaries that are defined in each case, ultimately, by the U.S. naval power and financial and from the beginning of the century, U.S. face the contradictions, problems, and the trepidation caused by this transition and the change of status: the status of "hegemon", restricted to the capitalist world until the early , 1980, the status of global imperial power "Today, it is impossible to predict how it will be administered this new kind of empire in the future. Because they still are national and they have to live at the same time with nearly two hundred states that are or are considered sovereign. And because in this system, the expansion of American power is primarily responsible for the multiplication of its competitors in the struggle for regional hegemony in the global system.
What we are seeing now is a change in the administration of U.S. global power This process is in full swing, but it will be long and complicated, involving divisions and struggles within and outside the company and the U.S. establishment Even so, most likely at the end of this process, the United States take a more distant and "arbitration" with respect to their former partners, and in all geopolitical regions of the world. Encourage internal divisions and the "regional balance" of power, playing his own allies, against one another by intervening directly and ultimately, according to the classical model of the British Empire.
This new type of U.S. imperial power does not exclude the possibility of war or military failures located, as in Iraq or Afghanistan, or the possibility of financial crises like the 2008. These financial crises not change the international economic hierarchy, as the government and the U.S. capital can pass their costs to other economic powers in the system. And wars or military failures still not be localized importance while not threaten U.S. naval supremacy in all oceans and seas, and until they escalate to a "hegemonic war" could limit U.S. military supremacy.
Anyway, it is clear that this new imperial power is not absolute and will not last forever. As noted, its continued expansion creates and strengthens the powers concurrent jurisdiction, and destabilizes and destroys the "balance" and institutions created by the U.S. itself, stimulating the formation of "coalitions of regional power" that eventually will slowly dismembering his imperial power, like the Roman Empire. Moreover, the engineering of new economic world shifted the center of capitalist accumulation and transforming China into an economy with a power of gravity almost equal to that of the United States. This new geo-capitalist economy, intensified international competition, and has already started a run imperialist "increasingly intense in Africa and South America, increasing the probability and the number of localized conflicts between the great powers.
addition , U.S. imperial power is likely to face a chronic lack of legitimacy within the U.S., because of the diversity and complexity of national ethnic minorities, and civilization of the empire, is absolutely incompatible with the protection and preservation of any system of values universal, contrary to what you dream a good portion of American society.
Anyway, the Obama family trip to the tropics, and the rhetoric easy and pleasant to the U.S. president, will serve to demonstrate how it works in practice, the "treatment of equals" when one of the parties is an empire. Matthias
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