Prediction 2 – Europe Draws Away From US Imperialism
EU imperialism has been, and remains, fatally subordinated to US imperialism, via NATO. NATO is the means by which US imperialism channels and resources its global strategic ambition, under the pretext of a defence of Europe – originally against the USSR, and now against Russia. In reality, the EU and Britain, has always paid for its own defence, with money much of which went, directly, into the coffers of US multinational military corporations, and via which US imperialism also exerted control over the EU. 62% of EU military spending on equipment goes to US corporations. NATO provides US weapons manufacturers with the scale required to produce efficiently. NATO spends much of its time not in any defence of Europe, which the EU, largely made unnecessary for most of the post-war period, but in promoting the global strategic interests of US imperialism across the globe, in the Middle East, the Pacific etc.
The interests of EU imperialism are not the same as those of US imperialism, and yet, at almost every stage, the interests of EU imperialism have been subordinated to those of US imperialism, and often to the distinct disadvantage of EU imperialism, as with the Iraq War, Libya, and, now, in relation to Ukraine, and with the growing trade war with China. Britain, as the representative of US imperialism within the EU, facilitated that subordination, and, although it is now outside the EU, it still seeks to fulfil that role. Hence Starmer's cakeist comment about not choosing between the US and the EU. In reality, that is not possible, and the contradiction is already tearing Britain apart.
But, as tensions rise, and as Trump asserts a more clear cut, America First set of petty-bourgeois nationalist interests, so the forces pushing the EU away from US imperialism, and on to a separate imperialist path of its own will sharpen, and even more will Britain be either rent asunder by the contradiction, or will be forced to choose between a rapprochement and subordination to the EU, or else an even more craven and vassal status vis a vis the US. The latter is ultimately unviable.
A look at the map of the world shows the problem for Western Europe, but also, the potential. History shows that trade develops first, and most, between near neighbours. Its that which leads to the creation of the bourgeois nation state, and, almost immediately after, to the increasing trade between those states, leading, in the age of imperialism, to the development of the multinational state, as the minimum efficient structure for the operation of imperialist capital, i.e. large-scale, socialised, monopoly capital. Large nation states, such as the United States, China, Russia, India, and increasingly Brazil and so on, avoid the need to establish new multinational states, such as the EU. Partly, that is because they are, in practice, already multinational states, masquerading as nation states. They all comprise a number of nations, and their regions and regional economies are often the size of small nation states, in their own right. The economy of California, for example, would rank as the world's fifth largest national economy. Yet, even these large national economies have been led to form regional blocs with their neighbours for the purpose of trade and cooperation. Its why Brexit was, and remains, such a supremely absurd idea, and act of self-harm.
So, back to the map of the world, it can be seen that the US, in addition to its own vast internal market and economy, also has on its border the potentially huge market of Canada, and also of Mexico, both of whom it is partnered with in the Mexico-Canada-America bloc. In addition, these economies, and primarily the US, has a large part of Central and South America as trading partners. The fact that Britain and Europe are more than 3,000 miles away – 6,000 miles away from the West Coast – and only via the Atlantic Ocean, means that its interests are more naturally, focused on its own backyard, rather than Europe. Hence the Monroe Doctrine, for example. When Britain was still the dominant economy, and an infant US was still in a colonial relation with it, the US, still looked East to Europe, and that continued so long as Britain and Europe remained the most developed economies. But, that has long since ceased to be the case.
The EU is the world's largest economy, and world's largest single market, but it satisfies most of its own needs internally, and its single market and customs union, requires US imperialism, as with any other economy to conform to its its rules and regulations if they want to sell into it, and trade with it. Not surprisingly, therefore, Canada and Mexico account for most of US trade, amounting to around a quarter of its total trade, and China is the third largest trading partner, mostly as a result of China, producing a large quantity of US manufactured imports. It also shows that the US, and its vast Californian economy, looks across the Pacific Ocean to China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, more than it looks across the Atlantic to Britain and Europe.
And, on the other side of the Pacific, not only does China and Japan look back across the Pacific to the US, Mexico, Canada, and Brazil, etc., but they have their own near abroad to trade with and into, and, increasingly, for China, that includes into the vast territory of Russia, Central Asia and India. These are huge, natural, geographical economic blocs. Initially, as with the development of the nation state, it is specific, historically determined factors that account for economic growth, development and capital accumulation, but, in the end, in the age of imperialism, as capital itself becomes a commodity that can be bought on world markets, it is the size of the country, and access to resources that become determinant. Even population size is not determinant, because, as the development of the US, Canada, and Australia showed, population can be grown by immigration and colonisation. That is why China, and its expansion into Eurasia looks unstoppable, whatever stumbles it may suffer along the road.
If these material conditions and economic realities are considered, and for a Marxist, they must be considered as primary, rather than the superficialities of morals, and political regimes, then the economic alliances that flow from that become fairly obvious to identify, and from those economic alliances, also flow the politico-strategic formations. So, for example, the EU is the largest single market, and economy in the world, but it is growing more slowly than China, and many other developing economies, many of which are seeking to ally themselves with the BRICS. The EU is also growing more slowly than the US, and one reason for that is that the EU has subordinated itself to US imperialism in relation to the latter's geo-strategic ambitions in the Middle-East, and in Ukraine, and China.
The EU is the world's largest economy, in terms of value, but it is not the largest in terms of geographical size, or population. It comprises only 450 million people, compared to 1.4 billion in China, and slightly more in India. The US has a population of around 330 million, and combined with that of Mexico, 129 million, and Canada, 37 million, puts the MCA on a par with the EU, but it also has all of Central and South America as its near abroad, of around 450 million people.
Again this shows what an idiotic idea Brexit is, because Britain's 60 million population has a trading partner of 450 million people, and long established trading relations just 25 miles away across the channel, and yet was sold the ludicrous idea of, instead turning its gaze to the US 3,000 miles away across the Atlantic Ocean, or even further away to the other side of the globe! In terms of analysis, therefore, we should ignore the idiocy of Brexit, and consider Britain, economically a part of the EU, and increasingly that will tear it away from its long-time political-military allegiance to the US. What then of the EU itself.
As an entire trading bloc, not surprisingly, the majority of EU trade is with what amount to other similar trading blocs, i.e. the US, and China, and ASEAN. Again, showing the idiocy of Brexit, Britain remains the EU's second largest trading partner, showing the continued trading relation, and importance of geographical proximity. The same is true in relation to the EU's trade with Switzerland (4th largest), and Norway (8th largest). But, until recently, when US imperialism/NATO pressed the EU into boycotting Russian energy, and imposing sanctions on the rest of its trade, Russia provided the EU, and particularly the countries of its Eastern flank, with large quantities of oil and gas, and at prices much lower than those it has now imposed on itself as a result of those boycotts and sanctions.
The growing Eurasian economic bloc of China~Russia means that the obvious further trading relationship is of the EU with that bloc, rather than with the US, and its Continental bloc. As I have pointed out before, a look even at Ukraine, shows that the majority of its trade, until recently, continued to be with Russia, and even in 2017 Russia accounted for 9% of Ukrainian exports, and 14.5% of its imports. As Russia declined as tensions between the two grew, it was replaced by China, which became the largest single nation trading partner of Ukraine.
Similarly, Georgia, where similar pro-EU, demonstrations to those that took place in Kiev, in 2014, are taking place, continues to have as its main trading partners China, Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, as well as its growing trade with the EU. For Western Europe, the EU was the rational development of capitalism, in its imperialist phase, but the further East in Europe, or Central Asia you go, the less is that true.
Imperialism, is the stage of capitalism in which it is dominated by socialised, industrial capital, and is tied to the state, which plans and regulates the economy on its behalf. Indeed, as Marx and Engels set out, in Anti-Duhring, the state, in so far as it takes over production itself, via nationalised industries and so on, becomes the state capitalist. But, in the age of imperialism, the minimum scale of capital becomes so large that the nation state, becomes a fetter on its further development. The nation state, and the associated ideas of national independence etc., become absolutely reactionary. The size of the single market, required as a minimum, expands and the state, correspondingly, must become a multinational state.
If we ignore the fascination of liberals and moralists with the ephemeral, and superficialities of questions of individual and political liberty, and the power of free markets, the rational development of capital in Eastern Europe, the Caucuses and Central Asia, is not towards the EU, but to the development of their own single market, and enhancement of the development of capital within it. Given the proximity, and land borders between those countries, and the EU, as against the separation of the EU from the Americas by several thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean, it is obvious that the rational development, and so progressive development, is for the EU to establish closer ties, and trading relations with such a Eurasian bloc, as against with the US.
In short, the rational development of the EU is towards, Eurasia, which forms, for it, a near abroad, rather than the US, which sits isolated from it, across 3,000 miles of ocean. The interests of the EU are the development of economic relations with the developing Eurasian bloc, irrespective of the superficialities of the nature of political regime, loosely framed by liberals and moralists as “democratic” or “totalitarian”. Inevitably, the development of those economic and trading relations, lead to a closer alignment of geo-strategic interests too. That does not mean that the EU has to align itself with the China~Russia bloc, but it does mean an increasing separation from the US/NATO imperialist bloc, in pursuit of the separate interests of EU imperialism.
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