cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44201302
Governments will change, people on the top might change. The question is whether they will face any consequences for their actions. Will the US as a whole face any consequence of its actions. Like the consequences other countries face when they do the stuff America is doing right now.
Or will it be back to normal as soon as the regime changes.
Will there be any lasting effects in how the world deals with US?
The US Empire is thankfully in its death throes.
Is there materialist analysis backing this claim?
Yes, industrial capacity has decayed massively, and the US Empire is forced to pull its forces out of countries like the ROK in order to support its failing adventurist wars. Profits from imperialism are declining, which is why austerity is being brought home, and why the AI bubble is getting so big. Compare the current assault on Iran with how the Iraq War went, the US Empire just doesn’t have the industrial capacity nor the domestic support required to actually succeed.
From when to when? And in what industries?
What forces? The US is obligated to keep roughly 28,500 troops station in the ROK under a long-standing treaty.
Austerity is not always an immediate indication that imperialism is declining. Neoliberalism always wants austerity, that doesn’t mean imperialism is in a constant state of decline. In this particular instance, it is most due to Trump giving outlandish budget increases to the Pentagon and the DHS whilst providing many of his billionaire buddies with massive tax cuts.
When has domestic support ever been necessary to continue war?
I think you’re just overthinking this and what you’re noticing is a temporary (possibly permanent) slump in the US’s dominance because Trump is a colossal fuck up of a president. Were there to be any long term consequences to US hegemony, it would most likely be as a result of other Western powers becoming more wary of reliance on the US and seeking slightly more sovereignty from the US. However, i think we’re still a ways away from that outcome.
Over the last few decades it has accelerated, impacting most production areas. Lots of it is shipped over to China, Vietnam, and other countries, in favor of an increasingly financialized service economy domestically.
THAAD units are being shifted over to the Middle East, which are critical for defense.
Why did the US Empire shift to massive tax cuts and increased millitary spending? Because the global south is developing, increasing south-south trade, and the US Empire is trying to re-assert its dominance in the area. You’re identifying a partial link, but you need to take this further, that’s how dialectics works.
Without domestic support, war efforts are undermined domestically. The Vietnam war, for example, became increasingly difficult as soldiers fragged their COs. It’s easier to wage war when your public supports it. You’re partially correct in that will alone doesn’t do shit, but active resistance to the war effort does change the war.
This is teetering into Great Man Theory, idealism rather than materialism. Trump is not the cause, but a symptom of the ongoing, gradual, quantitative decay in superprofits. As capitalism decays, fascism increases as the petite bourgeoisie faces proletarianization.
Europe is toothless, and utterly dependent on the US millitarily. Even now, they are split between needing Russian LNG due to the war in Iran, and their loyalty to the US Empire. No, the biggest threat to the US Empire is the rise in the PRC, which has set up infrastructure accelerating south-south trade, which allows global south countries to escape exploitative north-south unequal exchange.
That’s just regular capitalism? Labour is cheaper in Asia. Even then the US still maintains a tight hold on the aerospace, armaments and tech industries and still reversed some off-shoring; most notably the semiconductor industry.
The US also redeployed forces stationed in Europe deterring the USSR during the Gulf War, and yet it’s still standing strong 35 years later. They also did this during the Iraq war and Vietnam war. The real question is, “Are the US going to be overextended if China, Russia or the DPRK start escalating tensions elsewhere?” Even at that point nukes enter the conversation and it stops being predictable.
That’s not how dialectics works. You’re going too far and into economic determinism. Austerity policies aren’t always pursued for economic ends; they can also be done in pursuit of ideological ends.
It changes it, but not damningly so. At best this shows contempt towards the current administration and not to the US Empire as a whole.
If you haven’t already, I suggest you look into Louis Althusser’s idea of “Relative Autonomy” in texts like For Marx and Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. Trump is not the cause yes, but his actions still have real world effects that are not immediately tied to economic considerations. Similarly, fascism is a very specific thing. You can at best argue for general authoritarian outcomes due to the class conflict, but not fascism, as it is a specific ideology that can exist somewhat autonomously from the contradiction between capitalists and workers.
Your own argument just proved why the US Empire is not in its dying stages. Europe is completely dependent on the US and their influence geopolitically has only seemed to increase since their increased alliance and integration with Israel in attempts to tie down the Middle East as well. Ask yourself this question: If the US was well and truly close to its end, why didn’t EU members end up selling US bonds when Trump threatened Greenland? That’s because they’d end up tanking their own economies in the process. US debt is the backbone of the entire global financial system.
I can concede to you that the US isn’t as dominant as it once was since the fall of the USSR and that things are more multipolar now, but the current argument is about whether the US is close to its fall, and i just don’t see enough evidence supporting this claim. Don’t get me wrong, the US empire will fall at some point, but you make it sound like it’s imminent.
You’ve almost got it, as capitalism progresses it turns into imperialism, which itself is self-defeating. The US Empire is also short on what it needs to keep producing arms, due to tight controls on rare Earths and other raw materials from China. This is why Lenin’s analysis of imperialism is useful, we see how imperialism causes de-industrialization and undermines itself.
Yes, the US of 35 years ago had a stronger millitary. The US Empire has fancier tools, but cannot produce them at the same scale they once could. Quantitative buildup results in qualitative changes, this is why dialectics are necessary, not just metaphysical materialism. Materialism must be dialectical.
It is how dialectics works. History is not a series of snapshots, but something that unfolds and changes over time as internal contradictions result in development and change. I’m not going into economic determinism, ideology itself has a material basis. You’re trying to hide idealist analysis behind materialist phrasing, but by treating the ongoing problems with the US Empire as a result of Trump alone you’re literally ascribing to Great Man Theory.
Sure, my point here is that the US Empire’s ability to wage war is hindered. Iran will not fall no matter how much the US bombs it, they need boots on the ground to do so and the Statesian public has no appetite for this.
Fascism is simply capitalism defending itself from decay. It has material conditions that drive it forward. I’m aware that actions have real effects, but you need to connect it to historical trends. Development happens in spirals, not just because of the actions. Actions create new conditions, but the material conditions impact what ideas are had and what actions people take. As people shape the material conditions around them, their ideas are re-shaped, in an endless process.
Europe is imperialist too, and utterly subservient to the US. However, the imperislist system both depend on is weakening. Europe has practically no hard power, and the US Empire’s hard power is a shadow of its former self. Both are going down in a sinking ship.
The US Empire isn’t falling tomorrow, but it isn’t going to take a century either. In the grand scheme of things, the fall of the world’s largest empire is quickly approaching and will likely happen within our lifetimes.
I think you should probably brush up on dialectics, I recently read through Materialism and the Dialectical Method by Maurice Cornforth, and if you ignore the Lysenkoist views of genetics (taken out once the gene was proven, but this is based on an earlier edition), it’s really a fantastic overview. The four basic principles of dialectical materialism are as follows:
Dialectics does not regard nature as a collection of static, isolated objects, but as connected, dependent, and determined by each other.
Dialectics considers everything as in a state of continuous movement and change, of renewal and development, where something is always rising and something is always dying away.
Dialectics is not a simple process of growth, but where quantitative buildup results in qualitative change, and qualitative change result in quantitative outcomes, as a leap in state from one to the other, the lower to the higher, the simple to the complex.
Dialectics holds that the process of development from lower to higher takes place as a struggle of opposite tendencies that forms the basis of their contradictions.
When you pin the current downfall of the US Empire on Trump’s actions, you miss the context of why those actions came to be, and why Trump’s strategy isn’t nearly as effective at securing imperialist gains as Reagan’s was. The US Empire of today is not the same as the US Empire of 30-50 years ago, and the biggest changes between then and now are that the US Empire has offshored most of its production, and the global south now has far more south-south trade and can escape the exploitative north-south trade by which unequal exchange functions. This results in development, and decreased superprofits.
Which was part of the reason behind the whole Greenland ordeal. A problem which they’ve now seemed to be able to circumvent.
That’s because the fancier tools are higher quality and therefore more expensive to produce. Furthermore, since the cold war ended, thousands of small suppliers have been closing up by the decade because there’s no more business. This lead to consolidation in the hands of a few big players e.g., Lockheed Martin. The US could build back up to Cold War levels of preparedness if it wanted, but it’d take at least 5 years. That’s the real historical materialism here.
Ideology has a material basis, but do you know that that same ideology acts upon the material base as well? This is why i mentioned Althusser because he goes into this stuff. Also, i never said the ongoing problems of the US Empire are solely due to Trump, i only said that he’s accelerating its demise and acting as a baseboard from which other Western powers start to chart their own course. I am fully aware that real material conditions gave rise to Trump’s reign. The next step is realising how the material realities that DO come out of Trump’s presidency affect the US’s downfall and i assess them to be more than substantial.
And its defense somehow necessitates an ethnonationalist character? Are we talking about the same fascism?
Once again, quickly approaching is a stretch. It will most certainly happen within our lifetimes, but not in 10 or 20 years.
I did not do this. I only pointed out how Trump’s actions will serve as an anchor point in the future for Western powers. World leaders themselves aren’t sitting around contemplating material contradictions and dialectical movement. All they see is Trump’s actions and how it’s harmful to their own interests. In a sense this is dialectical as Trump’s actions represent a qualitative change resulting from the accumulation of multiple quantitative factors.
Not exactly. The rare earths aren’t the biggest problem themselves, it’s the tech to refine and utilize them, which China has a near global monopoly on.
Not quite. These are more expensive because the US is far more financialized. They are marginally better, but far more expensive. A big mac in Switzerland isn’t over three times as good as a big mac in Taiwan. Further, the US cannot re-industrialize in 5 years, if the US wanted to re-industrialize they’d need to cut the cost of labor, implement strong central planning, and sacrifice profits for re-industrializing.
In modern warfare, Iran is holding its own with drones that cost them a few thousand to make against multi-million dollar patriot missiles. The patriots are not hundreds of times more effective. Historical materialism requires recognizing the different circumstances of today.
The reason why I said you put too much of an emphasis on Trump is because you listed him as the reason, and not the symptom. Trump has an impact, of course, so as long as you aren’t putting him as primary then we’re fine.
Ethnonationalism is a symptom of fascism, not necessarily how you categorize it. Ethnonationalism usually rises in fascism, but isn’t definitional to it.
I think 10-50 years is a pretty reasonable window, and soon enough to call where we are at the “death throes.” You can disagree with that if you wish, but that’s where I think we are at right now.
If we can agree that Trump is not the cause, but instead a symptom, then we are more in agreement than not. Symptoms have material impact, but they aren’t the primary reason. Putting it in Marxist terms, Imperialism is principal and Trump is secondary to that, but that doesn’t mean Trump isn’t impacting it.
Yeah, internal tensions leading to a civil war is probably the only way the US could lose it’s dominance in the coming years.
More than anything, the drop in superprofits from imperialism is heightening the contradictions in Statesian class society. Hopefully a revolution can happen.
The US doesn’t really have any allies anymore and is quickly losing its dominance already