US ‘Carrot & Stick’ Strategy to Revive Imperialism
Donald Trump’s foreign policy has left commentators in a real tizzy. His markedly differing positions with regard to Ukraine and Gaza, in the first case apparently pursuing peace, and in the second asking for ethnic cleansing of an entire population, have left them wondering whether his influence on world affairs is a “positive” one or not.
The reason for such bemusement, however, lies not in anything that Trump has done, but in not cognizing the phenomenon of imperialism.
There can be little doubt that Western imperialism led by the US had pushed itself into a corner, where the choice was between either a disastrous escalation of the war in Ukraine even to the point of a nuclear confrontation, or a gradual erosion of imperialist hegemony.
Trump is attempting to extricate imperialism from such an impossibly tricky corner. The point is not whether he is “for peace” or “for war” or whether he is mindful of European interests or not; the point is that he is pursuing an alternative imperialist strategy that would rescue imperialism from this cul-de-sac, and he is in a position to do so because he is untainted by the earlier policy that created this cul-de-sac in the first place.
His method for re-asserting imperialist hegemony that was getting gradually eroded is a combination of carrot and stick. The basic assumption that underlay the provocation that produced the Ukraine war, namely, that Russia can be made to surrender to Western dictates as a result of it, has been proven false. Not only is it the case that Ukraine has been steadily losing ground during the war, but the economic sanctions against Russia that were supposed to “reduce the rouble to rubble” were totally counter-productive. The rouble, after a brief temporary fall, recovered to a level vis-à-vis the dollar that was even higher than before the sanctions, and, what is more, these sanctions produced a reaction where a challenge to the hegemony of the dollar came onto the agenda.
The Kazan summit of the BRICS countries posed “de-dollarisation” as a serious possibility. Unilateral imperialist sanctions, as long as they are directed against a few small countries, can be quite effective. But when they target a large number of countries. and that too countries as large as developed, and as resource-rich, as Russia, they not only lose their effectiveness as sanctions, but encourage the formation of a bloc of countries arrayed against the entire dominant imperial arrangement that passes as the international economic order, and this alternative tends to draw into its fold even non-sanctioned countries.
This is exactly what has been happening and what Trump faced when he came to office. The stick part of his carrot-and-stick method is well-known. He threatened to impose heavy tariffs against countries that went in for de-dollarisation, which is a blatant imperialist act and against all rules of the capitalist game. After all, any country, according to these rules, has the freedom to trade in any currency it likes provided its trading partner is willing, and also to hold its wealth in any currency that it fancies. To curtail that freedom by imposing high tariffs against such a country is blatant arm-twisting that no international order can explicitly endorse. But, Trump as an open and unrelenting imperialist had no qualms about exercising such economic coercion quite explicitly.
His attempt to bring about an end to the Ukraine war is the carrot in this carrot-and-stick method. Instead of an alternative power bloc being formed against the US and against Western imperialism in general, an end to this war on terms that are not unfavourable to Russia, will keep Russia out of any such alternative bloc. It will thereby undermine the ongoing attempts at challenging imperialist hegemony.
Of course, any end to the Ukraine war based on negotiations should be welcomed by all, but seeing this end as the outcome of a desire for peace, or as the pursuit of US interests at the expense of European “security concerns”, is wholly erroneous.
Trump is not on a peace mission, otherwise he would not have made the utterly belligerent remarks about Gaza. Indeed, capitalism is by its very nature against peace: as the French socialist Jean Jaures had famously remarked, “Capitalism carries war within it, just like clouds carry rain”. It is a desire to put imperialist hegemony on a better footing that motivates Trump not a desire for peace.
Likewise, the question of European security is a complete red herring: European security was never threatened by Russia, and all talk of a threat of “Russian imperialism” overrunning Europe was just an excuse to justify NATO expansionism. So, there is no question of European security being undermined by Trump’s peace move.
Trump’s difference from the European ruling cliques arises on account of two different alternative strategies that imperialism can pursue at present. One is the old Joe Biden strategy of aggression against Russia that had run into a cul-de-sac; and the other is an alternative strategy of ending the Ukraine war and weaning Russia away from an oppositional bloc against the hegemony of western imperialism. European rulers are wedded to the former while Trump is attempting the latter.
One has to see the opposition of the neo-Nazi AfD in Germany to the Ukraine war in exactly the same terms: its extreme aggressiveness vis-à-vis Palestine in contrast to its desire for an end to the Ukraine war, is symptomatic neither of any general desire for peace nor of an unconcern for “European security”, but of a certain strategic position.
Of course, Trump’s project of extricating imperialism from the corner to which it has been driven, is simultaneously a project of assertion of US hegemony over the imperialist bloc as a whole. His slogan “Make America Great Again” or MAGA is a project of recreating a world unquestioningly dominated by Western imperialism with the US as its unquestioned leader. It is a continuation in this sense of the strategy of making Europe dependent upon American energy sources that had been represented by the blowing up of Nord Stream II gas pipeline from Russia to Europe, allegedly by the US “Deep State”.
There is, however, a major contradiction in Trump’s strategy. There is a price to be paid for “leadership” of the capitalist world; and Trump wants a “leadership” role for the US without paying this price.
The price is the following: the “leader” must tolerate trade deficits vis-à-vis other major capitalist powers in order to accommodate their ambitions and prevent the capitalist world as a whole from sinking into a crisis. This is what Britain had done during the years of its “leadership” and this is what the US has been doing in the more recent period.
Britain’s running a trade deficit vis-à-vis Continental Europe and the US, who were the other major powers at that time, did not hurt it because it balanced this deficit, among other things, by claiming a surplus of invisible earnings vis-à-vis its colonial empire, the bulk of which was a cooked-up surplus against which it extracted a “drain” from these colonies of conquest, with which it settled its deficit with other major capitalist powers.
Post-war US, however, has not been in a similar “fortunate” position; it running a trade deficit vis-à-vis other major powers has made it sink deeper and deeper into debt. Its attempt to avoid getting even deeper into debt, which is a part of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” project and for which he is in the process of imposing tariffs against all its trading partners, in a situation where the overall demand in the capitalist world economy is not expanding because of the pressure from globalised finance capital to shun fiscal deficits and taxation of the rich for enlarging government expenditure everywhere, will only accentuate the world capitalist crisis, with a particularly heavy burden falling on the non-US capitalist world.
The Trump strategy for the revival of imperialism, therefore, amounts to having one’s cake and eating it too. His attempt to assert US leadership while seeking to impose tariffs on others amounts to a “beggar-thy-neighbour” policy vis-à-vis the rest of the world.
Such a “beggar-thy-neighbour” policy, which amounts to ensuring growth for oneself by snatching markets from others, is fundamentally inimical to the project of reasserting imperialist hegemony. If Biden had pushed imperialism into one corner, Trump’s extrication of it from that corner will only lead to its being pushed into another corner.
Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views are personal.
The Changing Strategic Posture of US
The bourgeoisie in the United States and its state (UBAS) currently confront an objective reality whereby their imperialist hegemony (of the unipolar variety) has been put into question. The strategic concord between China and Russia has achieved an alternative pole in international political economy. The strength of this pole in terms of economic and military power is of an order of magnitude that cannot be successfully confronted by UBAS.
The military asymmetry between the US on the one hand and China and Russia on the other, which spans both nuclear and conventional weapons, is fairly evident for all (including many policymakers in the US, at least some of whom are publicly articulating facts about this asymmetry, albeit with varying degrees of obliqueness), whose information is not derived from Hollywood or its derivatives.
Moreover, the relative strength of China in the production of manufactured commodities and Russia in the production of primary commodities ensures a near-vertical integration of production networks in both countries. Consequently, unilateral sanctions are failing in attaining the objective of dual containment (of China and Russia by UBAS) as evidenced by the outcome of the ongoing economic war against Russia.
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The strategic posture of dual containment is contrary to objective reality and, therefore, is unlikely to succeed unless one or more of the following three conditions are fulfilled.
One, the fracturing of the strategic concord between China and Russia. While there do exist contradictions between these two countries, this is unlikely to lead to a fracturing of the strategic concord as long as their concerns about the imperialist hegemony of UBAS are relevant.
Two, a revolutionary technological breakthrough under US imperialist hegemony that cannot be rapidly matched by either China or Russia. The US does retain a significant capacity for invention. However, China has by now either surpassed or equaled the US in almost all areas of frontier technologies. Therefore, the unilateral export controls and related coercive measures imposed by UBAS against China are increasingly failing.
Where such coercive measures could bite, China has at least two potential counter-measures. First, counter-sanctions involving critical materials. Second, China is a significant market for the output of many metropolitan capitalist firms subject to the export controls and sanctions of UBAS.
This gives rise to a contradiction between profits of such firms and the effectiveness of these coercive measures against China. In order to see why, consider the problem from the perspective of such metropolitan firms. If they believe that China will develop alternative production networks to produce their high-technology output regardless of the unilateral measures of UBAS, then they will be less inclined to comply with these unilateral measures.
Three, the emergence of global production networks spanning all reaches of the technological ladder in a few countries of the Global South (outside China and Russia). It is not evident how this is possible without relying on Chinese manufactured commodities and Russian primary commodities at least for some decades.
Therefore, even if this emergence does transpire, with or without the inducement of UBAS, there is no guarantee that the governments and ruling classes of these countries in the Global South will be willing to operate within the imperialist hegemony of UBAS. There also remain significant questions about whether the continued direct and indirect supply of primary commodities from the Global South to metropolitan capital (and therefore the prevalence of relative price stability) is compatible, within the framework of the capitalist system, with such an industrial breakthrough in some countries of the Global South (outside China and Russia).
None of these three possibilities are likely to transpire in the future, and therefore faced with these realities, the UBAS is being compelled to abandon the untenable dual containment strategy in favour of attempts to drive a wedge in the strategic concord between China and Russia.
This wedge strategy underlies recent political theatrics, such as the performative rhetoric of figures like Trump. These theatrics are part of a broader effort to legitimise the intent by UBAS to make some concessions to Russia in Europe in order to try and strategically isolate China.
Variants of this theatrics include claims that an end to the armed component of the conflict will ostensibly weaken the Russian economy, which is ostensibly driven principally by military spending; the deal regarding minerals between metropolitan capital and the Zelensky administration will provide a peace dividend; preposterous claims that the military and economic strength of European segment of metropolitan capital is sufficient to adequately supply the Zelensky administration in Ukraine; demands that Zelensky must either resign or be replaced by someone who is more inclined towards ending the armed component of the conflict in Ukraine. All of these claims, demands, and related manoeuvres reflect the heterogeneous means to manufacture consent for the same outcome—namely, strategic concessions to Russia by UBAS.
The criticism of the Trump Presidency by cosmopolitan neoliberals (who believe that integration with metropolitan capital under the hegemony of UBAS is benign for the people of all countries, including Ukraine), irrespective of the form of the criticism, amounts to a questioning of the mode of the sequencing of the moves from dual containment strategy to the wedge strategy.
It is possible that a Harris Presidency in the US (had Kamala Harris been elected) would have, in all likelihood, adopted the same sequencing (with minor variations perhaps) but communicated it in a language that is in sync with the conventions and idioms of cosmopolitan neoliberals.
The gauche theatrics of the neo-fascist clique driving the Trump Presidency, therefore, impel cosmopolitan neoliberals to accuse Trump or his associates of being explicit or implicit acolytes of Russia. However, if the Trump Presidency or any other administration were to actually act contrary to the interests of UBAS, then such leaders would have been subjected not merely to verbal critiques but criticism by weapons wielded by the agents of UBAS.
The more heterogeneity there is in these theatrics—including “debates” and “agency”—the more secure will the consent be that is consequently manufactured for the proposed transition from the strategy of dual containment to the wedge strategy.
Key architects of this strategic shift to prioritise containment of China, such as Elbridge Colby, articulate this shift in the strategy of UBAS with possibly the least possible theatrics that is compatible with the political priorities of the neo-fascist clique that is driving the Trump Presidency.
However, Russia is aware of the predicament that confronts UBAS and, therefore, will drive a hard bargain that may weaken the imperialist hegemony of UBAS with respect to other segments of metropolitan capital in Europe. The Trump Presidency’s imperialist manoeuvres regarding Panama, Greenland, West Asia, etc., are therefore attempts to shore up its heft to prepare for the day after such strategic concessions to Russia are made.
Yet this approach cannot resolve the fundamental contradiction confronting the imperialist hegemony of UBAS: Even if strategic concessions are made to Russia in Europe, will these be adequate to drive a sufficient wedge between China and Russia? If these strategic concessions breach a threshold level, will UBAS be able to securely pool the resources of all segments of metropolitan capital to try and contain China?
Fundamentally, the crisis of strategy of UBAS stems from the incompatibility between its imperialist hegemony and objective realities of contemporary international political economy.
The writer is Professor, Department of Economics, Satyawati College, University of Delhi. The views are personal.
