[DEBATE] : Sunday Times: "Vladimir Putin Set to Bait US with Nuclear Aid for Tehran"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles, said Marx, and the present geopolitical development, too,
is probably indirectly shaped by it.  Even before America invaded
Iraq, Immanuel Wallerstein prophetically wrote: "the use of such force
when the conditions of hegemony have already been undermined is a sign
of weakness rather than of strength, and weakens the user" ("Iraq: How
Great Powers Bring Themselves Down," 1 April 2002,
<http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/86en.htm>).

Why had "the conditions of [US] hegemony" been undermined by then,
though?  It would have been nice if it had been due to the strength of
the working class, but I think it was largely due to the weaknesses of
workers, in the United States above all (where workers had been so
thoroughly defeated that they could sustain their living standards
only by working more and more and going deeper and deeper into debt),
but also in China (whose economy rapidly developed -- and is still
developing -- at the cost of greater inequality) and much of the rest
of the world (whose savings -- sacrifices of the working class -- went
into big accumulations of dollar reserves that helped to keep interest
rates low and finance the US debts).  What comes after the US hegemony
remains to be seen.

Yoshie

On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 12:52 PM, Dominic Tweedie
<dominic.tweedie at gmail.com> wrote:
> Down with geopolitics! Down with Kremlinology! Down with the Glass
> Bead Game! Down with Analysis-Paralysis! Down with the Fruit at the
> Bottom of the Bowl!