Sam Gindin is the co-author of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy Of American Empire (with Leo Panitch). Green Left’s Federico Fuentes spoke to Gindin about the nature of the current tensions between states within global capitalism and whether China and Russia could replace the United States empire.
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After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, world politics was completely dominated by the US empire. But in recent years, a shift seems to be taking place with Russia invading Ukraine and even nations such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, among others, deploying military power beyond their borders. How should we understand these dynamics within global capitalism?
In thinking about these recent examples of restlessness (and leaving the issue of Russia and Ukraine to one side for now) we should not forget that on the way to global capitalism, examples of instability in the empire were hardly absent — South Korea, the Iranian Revolution, the Congo, Palestine, Vietnam, Venezuela, Syria, etc.
At one level, we need to appreciate how ambitious and fraught the project of making a global capitalism always was and remains. A world of formally sovereign states, each facing internal pressures, and intense competition among states vying for their share of global investment, cannot help but come with ongoing contradictions and conflicts.
There does, nevertheless, seem to be something new in the air today.
The US empire has lost some of its glamour, strength and legitimacy in recent years and the rise of China as a potential counterforce has posed the question of the permanence of the US empire.
The empire is of course not “forever”, but the examples you raise are far from justifying declarations that the empire itself is in imminent danger. For instance, Turkey is trying to carve out some space for itself, but is certainly not challenging the persistence of the US empire. Saudi Arabia even less so.
A good many countries of the Global South are not enamoured with the US empire, but aside from China they do not, even collectively, constitute a significant counterweight. Not only is their economic heft relatively small, but they also have little coherence among themselves other than their public disenchantments with the US.
Most of their economic links are not with each other but with the NATO countries, and their public expressions of disappointments with the empire leadership co-exist with them looking to increase their markets in the US and attract US investment to their countries.
Rhetorical declarations of a multipolar world challenging the US and its allies are symbolic; they do not themselves portend an alternative to US leadership.
How do you view China and Russia fitting into the global imperialist system? How should we understand the growing US-China rivalry?
The critical point in getting at Russia and China’s relationships to the US involves clarifying what we mean by “rivalry”. If it means a constant jockeying for higher economic status within the global economy, that is not news — it is inherent in globalised competition.
But if rivalry is about struggles to see who will play the leading role within the global order, then neither Russia nor China, or the two together, currently have either the interest or the capacity to take on the responsibilities of empire.
Russia’s GDP, even adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), is less than that of either Japan or Germany, and about one-fifth of the US.
Militarily, Russia has boosted its military expenditures greatly since its invasion of Ukraine, but estimates for 2024 still show that the US spends about six times as much on defence as Russia, and the rest of NATO spends an additional three times as much.
For all its size and successes, China’s GDP per capita is still one-sixth of the US. And setting Hong Kong aside, its four most important markets are the US and then three of the US’ most loyal allies: Japan, South Korea and Germany.
Militarily, China has no military bases in the Western Hemisphere and only two external bases overall, each beside China. However some 315 of America’s 750 external military bases are in and around the China Sea.
Putting Russia and China military expenditure together still leaves them at about half that of the US, with the rest of NATO roughly matching the Russia-China expenditures.
The US’s aggressive response to Russia and China reflects its determination to have absolute, not relative power. The contradiction here is not inter-imperial rivalry and China winning over Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America to replace US global leadership.
Furthermore, China’s past successes cannot simply be extrapolated, particularly because China is facing its own internal conflicts (coastal capitalists versus internal capitalists) and problems (the potential radicalisation of its working classes, environmental constraints, concerns in Asia about Chinese regional domination).
The immediate contradiction lies rather in the fact that in trying to contain China economically, the US is undermining the liberal trading order that has been central to defining the US empire.
Could one of the unintended consequences of this be the end of globalisation?
We need to distinguish between globalisation slowing down or even reversing a bit, and deglobalisation. More tensions and even conflicts might arise within globalisation, and this could lead to some backsliding. But globalisation is now so materially rooted that it is not going to end on its own.
For example, much is made of China now exporting less to the US because of the Trump-Biden tariffs. But its exports are still higher than they were a decade ago when the world was considered highly globalised.
And, in any case, other Asian countries are picking up some of the markets China lost, while US corporations are increasing imports from Mexico.
Still, the US is not omnipotent. It faces legitimacy problems at home and — through a combination of arrogance, paranoia and incompetence — unintended consequences abroad with their own dynamics and threats to the empire.
The rejection of a peace agreement in Ukraine in the name of weakening Russia has resulted in a strengthening of Russia and its standing, a horrific catastrophe for Ukraine, and a further loss of US legitimacy in the Global South.
Pressures on China have primarily led China to escalate its high-tech development and military preparedness.
And the nationalist turn in the US, even when it is performative, complicates the managing of the empire.
What should 21st-century socialist internationalism look like?
I would emphasise three points.
First, it is a mistake to think that inter-imperial rivalry is going to do the heavy lifting for the left in ending capitalism. The task is rather to build the social forces able to take this on.
Moreover, if inter-imperial rivalry were to emerge, given the weakness of the left, it would most likely come with extreme nationalism and make left organising even more difficult.
Second, internationalism begins at home. If we cannot take over and transform our own state, we can neither help ourselves or help struggles abroad (for example by transferring technology to the Global South, addressing the environment in the context of global inequalities, limiting intervention in their societies by our own states, etc).
When we struggle at home (instead of making concessions), we create more space for struggles abroad. As The Communist Manifesto put it, the class struggle is always international in substance, but against our own bourgeoisies and states in form.
Third, for all its populism and current confidence, the right will not challenge corporations or capitalism and therefore will not really take on the fight against imperialism.
If we understand imperialism today as the US-led drive to universalise capitalism, then fighting imperialism means replacing it with its opposite: the universalisation — starting at home but with an internationalist sensibility — of socialism.
[Read the full interview at links.org.au.]