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Home , New Imperialism

“New” : the British and US in Comparison*

Julian Go Boston University [email protected]

DRAFT submitted 6/12/09

Paper for CHS Mini-Conference “Past and Present,” Berkeley, CA, August 12, 2009*

*This paper comes in part from a chapter in my book monograph-in-progress Cycles of Global Power: the US and British Imperial Formations in Comparative Perspective INTRODUCTION Charges of a “new ” have proliferated amidst America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. This is usually meant to suggest that America is embarking upon a reinvigorated effort to dominate the globe. But in what sense, really, is this “new”? Some, like David Harvey, are more precise. While calling his book The New Imperialism, a large part of Harvey’s argument is that “…the ‘new imperialism’ appears as nothing more than a revisiting of the old, though in a different place and time.”1 Harvey argues that the US invasion of Iraq is a strategy for dealing with the America’s crisis of overaccumulation. This is, presumably, what drove British imperialism in the late nineteenth century too. In this sense, America’s new imperialism is just a reproduction of Britain’s old imperialism. Still, if America’s so-called new imperialism can be seen as a reproduction of Britain’s old-style imperialism, we must remember that even Britain’s old-style imperialism was also referred to as a “new imperialism.” Britain’s imperial exercises in and beginning in the 1880s and carrying through the early 20th century was said to be a sort of “new imperialism.” So we actually have two ‘new imperialisms’: Britain’s in the late nineteenth century, and America’s today. This paper accordingly attempts to put these two ‘new’ imperialisms in comparative context. Such a comparison has often been summoned in existing discourse, as Harvey’s passing statements suggest, but less often mobilized. The point of this paper is to take one step in that direction. One thing is clear from the get-go: the so-called “new imperialism” of today is not exactly the same as Britain’s new imperialism in the late nineteenth century. Britain’s new imperialism entailed the direct seizure of foreign land for the purposes of colonial annexation. If we want to call what the US is doing in Iraq – or for that matter, in Afghanistan – “imperialism” (and I think we can), we must recognize that this imperialism is different in form. It is about military intervention and temporary military occupation; not permanent seizure and declaration of sovereignty. It is neo- rather than traditional colonialism. And today we would not expect the US, or any other power, to engage in old-style colonialism. As I have argued elsewhere, contemporary

1David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford, 2003)., p. 182

1 conditions simply don’t allow it; the conditions of the global field tend to states – even the – away from it.2 Still, despite these differences, both British colonialism in the late nineteenth century and contemporary US military force can be treated analytically as imperialism. They are just different ways of exerting power over foreign territory; different tokens of the same imperial type. Therefore, in this paper I treat them as analytically equal phenomenon. I bracket the difference in form between the US and British imperialisms so that I can proceed to investigate deeper questions; specifically, questions of timing and of the causes. What are the forces that have unleashed the new imperialisms, both past and present?

THE PROBLEM: NEW IMPERIALISMS? First, when we speak of “new” what exactly do we mean? Talk of new imperialisms surround both US imperialism today and British imperialism in the late nineteenth century, but in what sense? For scholars and critics of the British , the answer is clear: British imperialism in the late nineteenth century was “new” because, compared to previous decades, Britain had been comparably less colonialist. This is the premise of the very first theories of imperialism after all: Spencer and Hobson tired to explain British imperialism under the presumption that Britain was becoming more and more aggressive at the time. And a look at data suggests that, indeed, Britain embarked upon a rash of colonial annexations beginning in the late nineteenth century (see Fig. 1). From 1815 to the 1860s, Britain acquired comparably less colonies than it did from the onward. In quantity and rate, therefore, Britain’s imperialism was new beginning ca. 1870s.

FIGURES 1 AND 2 HERE

Can something similar be said of the US? Most commentators see the invasion of Iraq as “new” because, presumably, the US had not previously been so bold. It is true that it had been a long while since the US occupied a country as big and unwieldly as Iraq. And

2 Julian Go, "Global Fields and Imperial Forms: Field Theory and the British and American Empires," Sociological Theory 26 (2008).

2 probably since , the US had not embarked upon such a major military invasion. But the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I would argue, does not capture America’s new imperialism. After all, the US had invaded Iraq in 1991. It had also conducted air raids later in the decade. The invasion in 2003 was only the tip of the iceberg. To be sure, we can consult some more data. As noted, Britain’s imperialism involved direct colonial rule, so colonial annexations is the best indicator. For the contemporary situation, though, we should use other indicators. And as suggested earlier, we can justifiably refer to instances of force abroad by the US; i.e. military deployments.3 If we go by this indicator, we can see that America’s new imperialism is indeed new; that the 2003 invasion of Iraq should be seen in this larger context (see Figure 2). Beginning in the 1980s, the US intervened abroad with higher frequency and more times than it did during the period 1946 to the 1970s. The first major intervention in the post-1970s period was the invasion of Grenada in 1983. Grenada marked the first major use of force since Vietnam. Also notable is the invasion of Panama in 1988. Panama was the largest military engagement of U.S. forces by that time since Vietnam, deploying some 24,000 troops. The 1980s saw interventions not only into Panama, Grenada, and Haiti but also small troop deployments to Chad, Sinai, Egypt, Libya, the Persian Gulf, and Lebanon. The 1990s saw a continuation. Besides the attack on Iraq in 1991 and continued strikes thereafter, the US sent troops to Somalia, Kuwait, Zaire, Bosnia, Croati, Sudan, and . The US used military power twice in the Balkans and sent troops for an occupation mission. In 1993, President Clinton ordered US ships to embargo Haiti; in 1994 he decided to use 20,000 US troops to occupy the country. The last US troops did not leave Haiti for another six years (later, in 2004, US troops returned for yet another occupation). America has unleashed a “new” imperialism indeed, and it did not begin with Iraq in 2003. It is also notable that, in both cases, consciousness of empire rose during these periods. That is, talk of empire proliferated in both Britain and the US. This is hard to measure with exactness but major newspapers help. References to either “our empire” or

3 The use of military power, after all, is the most blatant way of exerting power over other states; hence it is a decent indicator. More specifically, it is a “last resort” type of imperialism, not unlike direct . The idea is simple: more military aggression means more imperialistic aggression. It means a state has opted for a more direct type of imperialism,

3 the “” exploded in The Times of London (see Figure 3). Something similar can be seen in the New York Times (see Figure 4). While, in the US, there is a peak in the 1980s and then a dip in the early 1990s, there is a sense from the data that talk of empire in the press was more prevalent, overall, in the period beginning the late 1970s through 2003 than during the previous decades. This trend mirrors the growth in military interventions.

FIGURES 3 AND 4 HERE

So what was driving these new imperialisms? To this question, a host of neo-Marxian explanations await: ranging from the initial theses on British imperialism by Hobson or later Lenin, to more recent arguments about US imperialism by Harvey, Arrighi, and Wallerstein. The explanations here are in fact multiple and at times divergent: is it overaccumulation and underconsumption at home that drives the state to be imperialistic? Or is it a global structural relation rather than a domestic condition: hegemonic decline and the rise of contenders force the ailing hegemon to look abroad in a vain effort to ward off its doom? Either explanation appears worthy of deeper attention considering the timing of the new imperialisms: in both cases, the new imperialism began as the hegemons were in decline and as both experienced overaccumulation. One could in fact construct a historical sequence here that would apply to both the US and England. First, hegemons at their height engage in less imperialism, as capitalists enjoy a comparative advantage over rivals and resort to market forces rather than military aggression or colonization to accumulate. But as that process of accumulation necessarily (or so the theory goes) leads to overaccumulation, financiers need fresh fields of investment and export capital overseas. At the same time, the hegemon declines because competitors emerge. The new imperialisms follow from this situation. To protect the export of capital, and also to ward off the rise of competitors, the state initiates imperialism. This is not an implausible story. Note, for example, that the new imperialisms of both the US and occurred roughly around the same time as financial investment abroad increased. Here, however, I argue that another logic can also be seen

4 at work which this strictly economic story might occlude. Specifically, this is a sociopolitical logic of imperial clientelism embedded in the operations of empire itself.

REGIMES OF IMPERIAL ACCUMULATION AND CLIENTLIST LOGICS It necessary first to recognize different regimes of imperial accumulation. By this term, I intended to differentiate different types of empires or kinds of “imperial formations.”4 That is, rather than homogenize “empire” I intend to distinguish different political relations by which empires can do their work of establishing their networks and ultimately accumulating economic and/or security capital.5 The colonial form is the most recognizable type of imperial regime. Metropolitan-imperial states seize foreign territory, declare sovereignty over them, and proceed them to rule them so as to create a global (or just regional) network of territorial domains. The other form, though – sometimes related to “informal” imperialism or loosely called “indirect” rule – is imperial clientelism. Here, the metropolitan-imperial state does not declare sovereignty over foreign land; rather it establishes compliance and support from nominally-independent states. In other words, rather than colonialism, clientelism establishes relations of dependence (aka “alliance”). This most often happens through military protection, military or financial aid, policy support or providing access to US resources (including capital or markets), and so on. This might involve covert operations or military force to help establish clients, but once the clients are in place they are given much formal autonomy – manifest in national sovereignty itself – and do the bidding of the imperial state in exchange for resources (i.e. various types of capital). These different types of regimes are both imperialisms, both each carry their own distinct dynamics. Colonialism involves direct formal rule, which means the establishment of a colonial state on the ground. The imperial state sends agents to the rule the territory. This involves a foreign military force, a local police force, the enlistment of natives into the apparatus, the establishment of local collaborators, and so on. The native bureaucrats or local collaborators have some autonomy, but ultimately foreigners rule and

4 Ann Laura Stoler, Carole McGranahan, and Peter C. Perdue, eds., Imperial Formations (Santa Fe, 2007). 5 The pursuit of economic capital means establishing transnational relations across space in order to provide for or protect trade; to secure resources or markets; or to protect access to resources or markets. The pursuit of security capital means establishing transnational relations that help maintain defense.

5 they rule directly, on the spot. One dynamic associated with this, then, is the dialectical development of anti-colonial nationalism. Clientelism, however, involves a different logic. The official relation is between two theoretically equal states. There is no “colonial state.” There is, though, a client state or “subcontracted” state. The imperial metropole provides support for a nominally autonomous national state, which is headed by the collaborator/client and their allies. The collaborator-client has much more autonomy than, say, lower-level native bureaucrats in a colonial state. Here, anti-colonial nationalism is not the issue. The issue instead is: a) the possible recalcitrance of the client, and b) the development of local rivals who either oppose that client’s alliance with the imperial state or hope to take the place of the client. All of this can happen to a certain degree in colonial forms; but in imperial clientelism the client is given direct command of more resources (e.g. the national army) and more autonomy in general. Hence the likelihood for recalcitrance or local opposition is higher. I argue, then, that imperial clientelism contains the seeds for renewed imperialism of a more direct sort. That is, imperial states establish a regime of accumulation based upon the clientelist form, but as the logics of recalcitrance and/or resistance unfold, the imperial state is compelled to resort to a more aggressive imperialism – direct colonization or use of military force – to either reestablish power there or establish a different power network to replace the broken one. The timing of the breakdown and hence the reassertion of imperialism is contingent upon other logics, such as local political logics or global economic flows that disrupt local economies and impact the clients’ regimes. Indeed, as the imperial state exports capital or messes with the economies of the clients’ countries, the result can be economic disruption in the local economy which can in turn lead to social unrest, hence summoning the need for imperial intervention to quell the unrest. But the clientelist logic itself, I argue, is relatively autonomous, embedded in the form of the imperial regime itself.

CLIENTELISM AND NEW IMPERIALISMS The British case has already been discussed in some ways by Robinson and Gallagher’s “peripheral” explanation of imperialism. The larger story, however, begins with the fact that Britain employed imperial clientelism during its period of economic hegemony, i.e.

6 the mid-nineteenth century. Britain established colonial networks but tended to prefer imperial clientelism. This is why Britain colonized less in this period: the British state, rather than colonization, established clients. In parts of Africa like the Gold Coast, the British employed diplomats like John Beecroft to pay local African chiefs to become clients. Those chiefs provided British explorers and capitalists with access to resources and to help protect trade. In Fiji, British settlers and planters flooded in before the direct establishment of sovereignty, and local chiefs there complied initially in exchange for resources. Trade treaties were imposed upon Prince Mindon of Burma, who complied in exchange for protection from other European powers; and loans to Egypt helped secure compliance from the Khedivate there. Yet these relations set the basis for their own demise. Through these relations, local conditions were disrupted, local rivals posed trouble, or clients became recalcitrant, and in effect clientelistic relations began to breakdown. In response, the British state had to send in troops and assert direct control. The new imperialism arose from the need to quell the disorder, overthrow and replace the recalcitrant clients, stop the local opposition from taking over, or prevent foreign powers seeking to capitalize upon the breakdown from taking over. Economic interests were partially at stake in some of these cases; but the reason why clientelism gave way to formal direct rule is the breakdown in clientelism itself. The United States, after WWII, also constructed a clientelistic network. This involved huge outflows of foreign aid to developing states in the name of “modernization.” It also, at times, involved covert operations and electoral engineering to secure the victories of clients. Figure 5 suggests that such tactics were preferred to direct military rule in the mid-twentieth century. It shows that the number of covert operations and/or electoral manipulations in support of regime change were more frequent than military interventions. Yet, the data also show that those methods decreased as America’s new imperialism was unleashed. Covert operations and electoral engineering in this sense is an alternative mechanism to direct military intervention. The result was an global regime of imperial accumulation based upon clientelistic networks to enhance and protect America’s economic dominance while also serving as a bulwark against the Soviet threat. Often, as is well-known, the client states were authoritarian regimes.

7 FIGURE 5 HERE

Yet this regime of imperial accumulation, as with the British regime in the mid- nineteenth century, began show signs of breakdown beginning in the late 1970s. Popular protests and mass movements threatened to unseat American-supported dictators from Duvalier in Haiti to Marcos in the . This was partially concomitant with the “third wave” of democratization beginning in the 1970s and carrying through the 1980s. Democratization in part implied a potential breakdown in American-supported authoritarian regimes.6 The overall slow-down of the global economy in the 1970s and the subsequent debt crisis in the 1980s did not make things any easier. Around the globe, the ideology of post-colonial “developmentalism” fell apart, as so-called developing countries saw internal disorder and declining standards of living. The relative stability created by America’s informal empire “gave way to disintegrating order, simmering discontents, and unchanneled radical temperaments."7 The Middle East was one such site where unruly forces were unleashed. The late 1970s and 1980s saw the Iranian revolution and the seizure of American hostages in , PLO terrorism and the Lebanon war, and the Iraq-Iran war. The end of the Cold War raised yet more possibilities for instability, such that, in 1997, the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Intelligence Council made an important report. It noted the change from the old order of America’s regime of imperial accumulation, pinpointing important shifts in “the international system that emerged at the end of II and the environment within which the United States has become the global superpower.” Specifically, it warned that “most conflicts today are internal, not between states,” adding that “this tendency will continue, and states will find their attention increasingly riveted, and resources committed, to dealing with what goes on in countries.” It further worried that “…wWhen these states fail, refugee flows, or worse--ethnic or civil conflict, and even state disintegration--occur, with the potential for outside intervention.”8

6 On the “third wave” see Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, 1991).. 7 [Wallerstein, 2002 #1328], p. 64. 8 National Intelligence Council, “Global Trends 2010”, Nov. 1997.

8 Many of the instances of America’s new militarism can be related to the fissures in America’s previous imperial regime of clientelism. If the invasions of Iraq in 1991 and then again in 2003 are the clearest examples of America’s new imperialism, they are also the clearest examples of clientelist breakdown. Before Hussein invaded Kuwait, he had been a client of the United States. After Iraq and Iran had begun their war in 1980, the Reagan administration had come to the decision to treat him as their ally. A National Security Council document in 1983 had explicitly stated that an Iranian victory would be devastating for the US (Iran, recall, had previously captured American hostages). Consequently, the White House and State Department pressured the Export-Import Bank to finance Iraq; the Department of Agriculture facilitated Iraqi purchases of American agricultural commodities; the US military provided intelligence support; and Reagan sent a presidential envoy (Donald Rumsfeld, then head of a major multinational pharmaceutical firm) to consult with Hussein and his regime.9 Even after Iran conceded defeat in 1988, American support continued. Until at least 1990, U.S. firms sold aircraft to the regime; the US government approved licenses for American firms to sell biological products and electronics equipment to Iraqi missile-producing plants; and under Bush agricultural credits to Iraq were doubled to $1 billion a year.10 Ultimately, though, Hussein as client acted as other American clients – and British clients before – had acted: he overstepped his bounds by invading Kuwait. Hussein had previously sent “feelers” to the Bush administration to get a sense of how the US would respond to an invasion. The responses were ambiguous; while Secretary of Defense Cheney responded that the US would not take kindly to an invasion of Kuwait, the US State Department and the US Ambassador implied that the US would not take an opposed stance.11 In any case, Hussein did invade Kuwait, and this created a scenario that called for some kind of U.S. action. The reasons for why the action took the form of a massive military strike in Iraq are two-fold. The first has to do with oil. This might be obvious, but it was it not so

9John Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, "An Unnecessary War," Foreign Policy 134 (2003)., p. 56;Joyce Battle, ed., Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: the US Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984 (Washington, 2003).. 10Geoff Simons, Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martins Press, 1996), pp. 317-329 and Murray Waas, "What Washington Gave Saddam for Christmas," in Sifry and Cerf, eds., pp. 85-95. See also Lance Selfa, "The 1991 Gulf War: Establishing a New World Order," International Socialist Review 7 (1999).. 11Mearsheimer and Walt, "An Unnecessary War.", p. 54.

9 simple as U.S. oil interests hoping to tap Kuwait. Rather, the threat was that Iraq might monopolize oil reserves in the gulf. Washington feared that Iraq, by taking Kuwait, would not only have both its own oil and Kuwaiti oil, but also then take Saudi Arabia, thereby controlling a majority of the region’s oil reserves. This was the frightful scenario of a single “oil hegemon,” a scenario that was, American strategists contended, simply impermissible.12 The threat was real in the eyes of the American administration. It is now known that the United States had made contingency plans to invade the Middle East as a result of the oil embargo of 1973.13 With the invasion of Kuwait, a similar contingency appeared to be unfolding. Richard Haas, who received a Presidential Medal for his role in developing the invasion plan (he was the Special Assistant to Bush the elder and National Security Council Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs), thought so for sure. The invasion of Kuwait, he said, raised fears in the administration that “Iraq was preparing to invade Saudi Arabia. Even if not, it was thought that an Iraq that controlled Kuwait could intimidate Saudi Arabia and he other Gulf states – and as a result dominate the world’s energy markets.”14 Therefore, one key objective of the invasion was to maintain “the security and stability of Saudi Arabia and the entire Gulf region.” Among the more “immediate concerns” guiding the invasion, he said, were about “energy interests and the well-being of America’s traditional friends in the Middle East.”15 Iraq, however, is only the tip of iceberg. Other interventions, however small, were unleashed as the prior clientelistic networks began to breakdown. The 1989 Panama invasion, for instance, was partially the result in a breakdown of clientelism. The invasion of Grenada, or “Operation Just Cause”, was ostensibly precipitated by Gen. Manuel Noriega’s illicit activities and his harassment of American soldiers. But Noriega had long been a close ally of American agencies.16 He was used to provide intelligence information on and aided the contra campaign against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Fittingly, the US had turned its back when he abused his power. In 1979, officials in the

12Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, 2006)., p. 178-9 13 “Britain Says U.S. Planned to Seize Oil in ’73 Crisis’ NYT 4 Jan. 2004, A6. 14Richard Haas, Intervention: the Use of American Military Force in the Post-Cold War Period (Washington, D.C., 1999)., p. 32 15Ibid., p. 33 16 Eytan Gilboa, "The Panama Invasion Revisited: Lessons for the Use of Force in the Post Cold War Era," Political Science Quarterly 110 (1995-1996)., p. 541.

10 Carter administration officials even blocked drug-trafficking and arms-struggling charges against him; and subsequent administrations tolerated Noriega’s abuse of Panama’s elections in the early 1980s.17 The problem was that the relationship with Noriega – like so many clientelistic relationships - soon became unwieldly. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Noriega’s Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) heightened its repression of dissidents. One notable result was the eruption of popular protests in the country, including a massive demonstration against Noriega involving 100,000 people in Panama City. Then, in 1988, two federal grand juries indicted Noriega for rackeetering, drug trafficking, and money laundering – all without the Reagan administration’s consent. The administration first turned to coup attempts, which failed. When Bush took office, his administration had publicly stated that Noriega “must go.”18 Noriega subsequently stepped up his resistance to American control through various provocations, not least by harassing American soldiers. The further failure of covert operations and Noriega’s continued recalcitrance in turn posed trouble for the Bush administration. Invasion was a final resort. Finally, consider the invasion of Haiti in 1994. America’s clientelistic relationship with Haiti had plagued successive American administrations ever since the Duvalierian regime (both father and then son) began to crumble under the weight of waves of instability and popular protest. Aristide rode that wave of populism, and his fiery leftist and anti-US rhetoric did not win him friends in the Bush administration. The American- supported elections in 1990 was a pragmatic compromise: the Bush administration hoped that elections would subdue social disorder and elevate former World Bank official Marc Bazin into office, thereby replacing one client with another. But Aristide’s victory took Washington by surprise, and the CIA waged a covert campaign to discredit him and the Bush administration gave de facto support to the bloody coup led by General Raoul Cédras.19 What followed was yet more popular protest, violent repression of pro-Aristide forces, and widespread international attention, not to mention a Haitian refugee crisis produced by the military regime anti-Aristide violence. The Clinton administration was finally pushed to adopt a strategy of reinstalling Aristide to quell the unstoppable

17 Ibid., p. 541-2. 18 McAllister, Bill, “Bush Vows to Press Noriega,” Washington Post 23 Dec. 1988. 19 Morris Morley and Chris McGillion, "'Disobedient' Generals and the Politics of Redemocratization: The Clinton Administration and Haiti," Political Science Quarterly 112 (1997)., pp. 364-67.

11 protests, disorder, and media attention while nonetheless hoping to discipline him and make him a more amenable client. Doing so involved the deployment of US troops. It also involved Haitin submission to a new structural adjustment program and new economic aid. US Deputy Sec. of State Strobe Talbott noted “Even after our exit in February 1996 we will remain in charge by means of the USAID and the private sector.”20 The successive interventions into the Balkans in the 1990s were not unlike those in Haiti in that they were partially conditioned by peripheral instability. In this case, the breakdown of the geopolitical order that had accompanied America’s post-WWII hegemony was key. The integrity of Yugoslavia had been maintained by both US and USSR. With the end of the Cold War, intra-Yugoslavian tensions became more likely. This thereby demanded some kind of intervention. The reason why intervention took the form of US-led NATO operations, however, also had to do with America’s shifting relations with Western . The end of the Cold War meant Europe could no longer be a guaranteed client. Protection from the Soviets had been America’s main claim to alliance with Europe, and the key justification for NATO. The Cold War had provided the US with its primary justification for its military presence in Europe and, relatedly, Europe’s dependence upon the US. At stake after the end of the Cold War era, then, was the potential loss of American political hegemony in the region, represented primarily through NATO. Why should Europe depend upon the US if the communist threat was no longer palpable? Why should Europe continue with the NATO alliance? Why should not Europe form its own security apparatus autonomous from American control? The end of NATO was, in fact, a key fear of American planners and policy-makers.21 The key, then, was to keep NATO intact whilst also making sure the US maintained its traditional dominance over it.22 The decision to intervene in the Bosnia campaign, the subsequent campaigns in the later part of the decade, and America’s promotion of the expansion of NATO

20 Quoted in William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US intervention, and hegemony (Cambridge, 1996)., p. 311. 21Peter Gowan, Global Gamble: Washington's Faustian Bid for World Dominance (London, 1999).; A. J. Bacevich, American empire: the realities and consequences of U.S. diplomacy (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).; Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present.. 22 Bacevich, American empire: the realities and consequences of U.S. diplomacy., p. 103-107.

12 followed from these considerations. “Operation Allied Force,” notes former Col. Andrew Bacevich, “was neither planned nor conducted to alleviate the plight of the Kosovars.” Secretary of State Albright never intended for Milosovic to accept a negotiated settlement, for this would preclude NATO action. Instead, what the US wanted first and foremost was “military action”, i.e. “a demonstration of what a new, more muscular alliance under U.S. direction could accomplish in thwarting ‘creeping instability.’ The intent of Operation Allied Force was to provide an object lesson to any European state fancying that it was exempt from the rules of the post-Cold War era. It was not Kosovo that counted, but affirming the dominant position of the United States” in Europe.23 Before the first campaign, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael J. Dugan wrote in the New York Times that a “win in the Balkans would establish U.S. leadership in the post- Cold War world in a way that Operation Desert Storm never could.”24 In 1997, after the first 1995 campaign but before the 1999 Kosovo operation, a document circulating in the CIA believed that the first intervention had had positive impact on exactly the point fingered by Dugan. “European publics will continue to support the US military presence in Europe, partly as a hedge against Russia and renationalization of defenses, and as a result of NATO's entry into the Bosnia imbroglio--a step that reaffirmed the effectiveness of the Alliance in managing post-Cold war crises. Europeans will not find anything sacrosanct about the number of US forces stationed in their countries--their views of American leadership will be determined less by the size of the American presence than by the use of these forces for combined operations.”25 No doubt, in all of these cases certain economic interests were at play. America’s interventions in Haiti and Panama, for example, were partly justified on the grounds that new economic treaties and regional arrangements with the Caribbean and Central America would not be tenable unless clients and order were restored. And the US had economic interests in the stability of the Balkans. America’s interests in maintaining oil hegemony in Iraq – if only to prevent rivals like from having it – should go without saying. A contrast would be Africa. Africa also saw peripheral instability. But the continent was simply not on the American states’ strategic map. While certain raw

23Ibid., p. 104-5. 24 “Operation Balkan Storm: Here’s a Plan” NYT, 29 Nov 1992, p. E11. 25National Intelligence Council, “Global Trends 2010”, Nov. 1997.

13 materials had been seen as essential for America’s economic base in the mid-twentieth century, many of those raw materials had lost their vitality as alternative technologies and new industries shifted away from them. Unlike Europe, the Middle East, or the south of the western hemisphere, it was not part of the American states’ plan for economic recovery since the 1980s. It followed that intervention into Africa was not as likely. Economic interests surely help explain this. But while economic interests help understand why the US did not intervene in Africa, we cannot understand when and why the US intervened when it did without understanding clientelistic logics. Without the breakdown of clientelistic relations, America’s economic interests around the globe would not be threatened, and so intervention would not be needed. Clientelism can protect economic interests just as well. It is when such clientelistic regimes of imperial accumulation break down that new imperialisms become all the more necessary. Or to paraphrase Robinson and Gallagher’s famous saying about Britain’s new imperialism: indirect rule where possible, military power when necessary.

14 TABLES AND FIGURES

Fig. 1 British Formal Annexations, 1815-1920

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Fig. 2 Number of US Military Deployments

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Fig. 3

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Fig. 4 References to “American Empire” in the New York Times

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Fig. 5 US Military Deployments vs. Covert Operations/Subverted Elections aimed at Regime Change, 1946-2002

19 REFERENCES Bacevich, A. J. American empire: the realities and consequences of U.S. diplomacy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. Battle, Joyce, ed. Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: the US Tilts toward Iraq, 1980- 1984. Washington: National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82, 2003. Gilboa, Eytan. "The Panama Invasion Revisited: Lessons for the Use of Force in the Post Cold War Era." Political Science Quarterly 110, no. 4 (1995-1996): 539-562. Go, Julian. "Global Fields and Imperial Forms: Field Theory and the British and American Empires." Sociological Theory 26, no. 3 (2008): 201-229. Gowan, Peter. Global Gamble: Washington's Faustian Bid for World Dominance. London: Verso, 1999. Haas, Richard. Intervention: the Use of American Military Force in the Post-Cold War Period. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999. Harvey, David. The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Huntington, Samuel. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. Layne, Christopher. The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Mearsheimer, John, and Stephen M. Walt. "An Unnecessary War." Foreign Policy 134, no. Jan-Feb (2003): 50-59. Morley, Morris, and Chris McGillion. "'Disobedient' Generals and the Politics of Redemocratization: The Clinton Administration and Haiti." Political Science Quarterly 112, no. 3 (1997): 363-384. Robinson, William I. Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US intervention, and hegemony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Selfa, Lance. "The 1991 Gulf War: Establishing a New World Order." International Socialist Review 7, no. Spring (1999). Stoler, Ann Laura, Carole McGranahan, and Peter C. Perdue, eds. Imperial Formations. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2007.

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