A new and very dangerous imperial era has begun

John Rees

25 December 2024

The US faces Trump's isolationism and protectionism, China is in economic and social peril and the Middle East is in turmoil. The tectonic plates of empire are surely shifting

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/us-new-dangerous-imperial-era-has-begun

As the 21st century ends its first quarter, the global system of interstate competition is at a watershed.

The modern system was born in the 17th century as the Dutch and the English created capitalist state machines at home and capitalist empires abroad.

It has been remade more than once since, first with the rise of industrial capitalist states and the system of European colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. 

The system was remade again after it crashed in the two world wars of the first half of the 20th century, or the "30 years war" as historian EH Carr called the 1914-1945 era.

The Cold War that emerged from that global conflict was the start of the age of United States dominance.

Protectionism allied to isolationism

Some of the effects of this have been vividly displayed over the past 12 months.

Donald Trump's protectionism is one aspect of this tectonic shift. Rising industrial powers often introduce protectionist policies, as the US did in the first half of the 20th century and Britain did before 1840.

However, industrial powers in a dominant market position are less likely to rely on protectionism.

Indeed, they tend to favour free trade, as the UK did after the Industrial Revolution took full effect and as the US did when it became the world's leading power after 1945, using economic superiority to crack open the protected markets of other states.

Now, China is a champion of free trade, and the US has been taking a protectionist turn for the first time since the 1930s. Trade wars can, but do not necessarily, lead to military conflict.

But in Trump's case, protectionism is allied to isolationism, and this leads to the wider perception - nurtured by Trump for electoral reasons in the era of the Iraq syndrome - that he is averse to US involvement in "foreign wars". 

This, however, is to misread the situation that US imperialism finds itself in. Trump may want to distance himself from the failed wars of the last generation, including the Ukraine war, but he is by no means a pacifist.

Trump wants to concentrate on China; he is an advocate of pronounced hostility to Iran; and his well-known derogatory remarks about Nato are a threat designed to get the European powers to increase their arms spending - a tactic that was remarkably successful in his first term.

He has already launched a similar offensive against the European Nato states ahead of his inauguration, demanding they pay an unprecedented 5 percent of GDP on arms while the US itself pays only 3.5 percent.

This is surely a sign of declining US hegemony when the imperial capital can no longer fund its own military supremacy and demands increasing tribute from its satraps.

Sustained preparation for war

Trump may well want to, and may perhaps be able to, facilitate an uneasy peace between the exhausted participants in the Ukraine war - one that freezes hostilities without diminishing the likelihood of them breaking out again in the future.

But that war has hurtled the Nato powers down the road of sustained preparation for war and reinforced Russian President Vladimir Putin's alliances with others, including China.

Ukraine is not, however, the only place where the weakening of US hegemony can be detected. The situation in the Middle East tells the same story.

Firstly, the US may like to lessen its commitment to policing the Middle East - the old imperial problem, so to say - in order to concentrate on the new imperial problem in the Far East.

But disengagement is all but impossible. The most profitable oil in the world is in the Middle East, and it is far easier to extract from its sands than anywhere else, including the US itself. And as the Houthis have just demonstrated beyond all possible doubt, the Red Sea-Suez Canal shipping route is decisive for world trade.

Moreover, political instability in the region always has a global impact and is never simply a regional affair. 

US imperialism might seem to have had a good year, as its ally Israel destroyed Gaza, curtailed the effectiveness of Hezbollah and witnessed the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in Syria.

However, the political price of this has been enormous. Israel has become a leper state, widely accused of genocide. Its prime minister is a man wanted for war crimes in 124 countries, and it is unclear whether this rogue state is in any way fully under its imperial master's control.

Yes, the US prevented a full-scale regional war with Iran, successfully instructing Israel not to hit Iran's oil facilities or nuclear weapons sites.

Challenge of China

But short of this, Israel has recognised US "red lines" more in the breach than the observance. The latest breach is the occupation of more Syrian land on the Golan Heights, further complicating the already Balkanised map of Syria.

The political landscape of post-Assad Syria, as Trump has admitted, will be as much decided by Turkey - an ally of the new regime - as by the US directly.

Indeed, it could be argued that whatever advantages Israel has created through force of arms have been negated by the diplomatic and political damage this has caused as well as the prospect of renewed conflict in post-Assad Syria, where the new government confronts the Kurds and, less enthusiastically, the Israelis.

Finally, China itself.

For all the difficulties that US imperialism has in extracting itself from European and Middle Eastern commitments, it will continue to concentrate substantial force to face the new challenger for global hegemony.

In a competitive world market and a competitive international state system, it cannot do otherwise. It is a structural imperative of the global imperial order, no matter what noises about "peaceful coexistence" the Chinese state and its western buglers make.

In the past, it was a common expectation that China's economic strength would continue to increase, that its military power would also rise, and that such a challenge to US imperialism would lead to dangerous international incidents and the threat of a wider war.

Weakened hegemon

Such projections have some validity. However, even an economy that has industrialised as fast as China's - perhaps especially those that industrialise just as fast - does not continue to rise exponentially forever.

There have long been signs that China's growth rate has fallen, not just for this year or that year, but permanently from its peak.

The Chinese Communist Party dictatorship has realised this, of course, and it is attempting to develop its internal market to compensate, as many industrialising states have done before.

This does not lessen the likelihood of international tension' in fact, it is more likely to increase it. Empire and the management of unrest at home are mutual drivers of each other, as both the British and US ruling classes can attest. 

As 2025 opens, we have a weakened hegemon led by a president who, for the first time in nearly 100 years, is about to lurch towards managing an empire with a mixture of protectionism, isolationism and delegation to proxies. 

In China, he faces a global challenger whose most spectacular years of growth may already be behind it, while its most serious internal problems created by that growth lie ahead of it.

Governments faced with such problems nearly always attempt to partially externalise the problems, looking for solutions through imperial success and for enemies who can be blamed for maladministration.

This combination of factors alone will make the second quarter of the 21st century an era in which ordinary citizens will have to mobilise to keep the peace.