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1. The systemic crisis, the epicentre of which is found in the United States, will not push the White House towards a policy of “non-intervention” on the global scene as some have foreseen. It will rather lead it to an internationalist imperialism of Wilsonian tradition which, pragmatist as it will be, will show a continuity with the policy of former President Bush.
2. This doesn’t mean that the imperial internationalism will take the same unilateralist shape which characterized it after 2001. The Neocon strategy of the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Bush triad gave small results compared to the huge effort it put into war, finance and diplomacy. Because of its high costs, the Neocon strategy (presented as a struggle to the bitter end against terrorism, but which actually aimed at strengthening the American supremacy through war) was one of the reasons of the crisis. Furthermore it turned out to be a half-disaster. Indeed, the Pyrrhic victory in Iraq notwithstanding, it gave new strength to the anti-imperialist resistances; it deepened the opposition to the so-called “rogue states”; it created serious conflicts with Putin’s Russia, and generated a latent breakaway in the relationship with the traditional allies (not only the European ones).
3. There follows that the White House will need to readjust its imperial policy in order to maintain the US’s now unsteady world supremacy. It will combine the mono-centric strategy with multi-lateralist tactics. It will turn to unilateral military intervention only as a last resort, using at first its powerful diplomacy, which is nothing but a mask of its huge military power of deterrence. Then it will strengthen NATO, which means involving more strongly the European Union in dealing with the international tensions. Thirdly by waging wars through a third party, i.e. resorting to proxy troops and local Quisling-states; finally by directly supporting internal popular uprisings in the name of “democracy” in order to include new countries in their geopolitical orbit (“colour revolutions” model).
4. The theory that the world already entered a post-American phase is not supported by facts. It is only a latent tendency (if one assumes that it can assert itself without humanity exiting from capitalism). Its counter-tendency, that is, the hell-bent resistance of American imperialism, must also be taken into account. Indeed, Barack Obama was not chosen by the American imperialistic oligarchies to go along with a “new polycentric world order”, but rather to nip it in the bud. This is why the world, far from entering a period of appeasement, risks to plunge into the spiral of a wide, long-lasting and multi-dimensional open warfare, characterized by the hitherto unknown interweave of the old North-South conflict with the West-East and North-North ones (initially through a third party).
5. The White House will not accept a new polycentric hierarchy of powers, and will not pursue the strategy of a “world government” or an equal balance with the other powers. If anything, its goal is to create a multilateral system of balance centered on a strong American supremacy, where the other powers act as supporting actors (in the footsteps of the Rooseveltian doctrine of the “Four Policemen”) with a sub-system of small regional gendarmes. This, too, leads us to foresee that rivalries will deepen if the other powers (Russia first of all) do not accept this hierarchy. Those rivalries cannot be defined otherwise than as inter-imperialistic.
6. In this scenario, the European Union, caught between the hammer and the anvil, will be confronted with very strong geopolitical tensions. It is certain that the White House, according to its behaviour from the Second World War on, will want to avert by any means the chance that Europe will lean towards a Euro-Asiatic perspective, loosening its ties of subjection to the United States and starting to be its own boss. Barack Obama will not hesitate to fight any Eurasiatist hypothesis of Europe getting closer to Russia, and if need be he will resort to tearing the EU apart, fuelling regional conflicts in order to isolate and weaken Russia and using NATO to keep the EU subdued.
7. If the USA wants to remain the only super-imperialism Barack Obama will not be able to loosen the pressure on the Middle East. The President-elect indeed already reiterated the unconditioned support to Israel and stated that the US will not withdraw from the objective of crushing the Arab resistances, Hezbollah and Hamas first of all – which he dismissed as “terrorist” the way Bush did. He said – confirming the agreements with the puppet government of Baghdad (SOFA) – that strategical military bases will be kept in Iraq, using the same model of serfdom used after the Second World War with the defeated countries. He finally reasserted that he will not accept any compromise with Teheran until they give up their nuclear programme and stop supporting Hezbollah and Hamas.
8. His promise to concentrate the military pressure on Afghanistan must not, therefore, be misunderstood as the will to abandon the US’s position of supremacy in the Middle East. The Pentagon and the State Department cannot think to get rid of the Afghan resistance and conquer the country forever without a steady control over the Middle East.
9. Afghanistan represents, in the geopolitical perspective of the new American leadership, the symbolic centre of their imperial plan. This is why the focus on this country is an omen of new and deeper conflicts. Afghanistan is indeed the place where it will be decided if, in the coming period, a new polycentric world order will take the place of the stars-and-stripes mono-centric one.
10. There are six strategical goals which the USA would reach if they won the Afghan war. (a) The instantaneous one, which is very important from a symbolic point of view, is that they would prove, after the uncertain outcome in Iraq, to have been able to crush the strongest resistance they have met after the Vietnamese one, and to have stopped the Islamic wave. (b) This would have serious consequences on the Islamic Republic of Iran, which would find itself completely encircled and choked. (c) A victory over the Afghan Islamic resistance would then help the United States normalize Pakistan by downsizing in a strategic way the military power of Islamabad in favour of the tame Indian elephant. (d) Central Asia, with its energy supplies and its pipelines, would pass under the US’s tutorship. (e) This would break in its more sensitive point the strategical axis between Moscow and Beijing and humiliate for a long time the strategical ambitions of Putin’s Russia. The strategical objective of the Brzezinskian plan — getting hold of China into the American orbit — would then become realistic. (f) Europe has been irreparably drawn into the Afghan war with the NATO-ISAF mission. Therefore, a military escalation in Afghanistan would chain Europe to its role of a compliant supporting actor.
11. In this frameset, the reason of being of the Anti-Imperialist Camp doesn’t weaken, but becomes even more relevant. Being defeatists but not indifferent towards the possible explosion of violent West-East and North-North inter-imperialistic rivalries (the defeat of the US super-imperialism remains the main goal of every anti-imperialist resistance; for them a polycentric imbalance is to be preferred over a mono-centric despotism), we will have many chances for struggle, mainly centered on the following three axes: the support to the anti-imperialist resistances, the Afghan one first of all; the struggle against NATO; both of which converge on the third one, i.e. the unconditioned and irreducible opposition to the American super-imperialism, as it remains the central pillar of the international capitalistic system.
12. Our North Star remains the same: building a worldwide Anti-Imperialist Front. We never hid from ourselves, nor are we doing it now, the difficulties we will find on our way to this Front. It is not implied by the order of things, nor have we ever thought that it is already present in History’s womb. Different conditions, objective and subjective, must combine for the international unity of the Resistances to take shape. The objective ones depend on the imponderable flow of the events; the subjective ones depend basically on the possibility that the greatest part of the Islamic resistance and the different revolutionary and communist forces can finally meet. In turn, the possibility of this brotherhood will depend on the ability of both actors to get rid, respectively, of the myth of the Umma as the sole horizon of liberation and of the myth of the leading role of the Western civilization, which goes along with the worship of progress, even if it is capitalistic.
Therefore, our role is not limited to building the anti-imperialist solidarity and stimulating the Resistance wherever possible. Working fore the aforementioned connection is not less important, and it is a huge task which requires not only to take action, but also a great theoretical and cultural effort.
January 4th, 2009
