Radio Havana Cuba

Notes on the Revolution / Column 23

October 25, 2019

The reconfiguration of US imperialism: Economic and financial war

By Charles McKelvey

Luís René Fernández, Researcher at the Center for Hemispheric and U.S. Studies, maintains that the recent intensification of the U.S. blockade against Cuba and the blockade of Venezuela are manifestations of a reconfiguration of U.S. imperialism. The reformulation of U.S. policy is based on a recognition by U.S. policymakers that the United States has experienced in recent decades a decline in its economic and commercial capacities relative to ascending China as well as the Western European economies, and it has suffered a loss in its international prestige. As a result, it can no longer apply the kinds of political and economic pressures that it was able to employ in the period 1945 to 1965. Even though it continues to have military dominance, U.S. policymakers recognize that war has horrendous consequences for all concerned, and it no longer is a viable option. Therefore, recognizing that the USA continues to have a large market and that the dollar remains the most important international currency in the world, it is using certain economic and financial measures to attain political objectives. In some cases, it is applying tariffs against countries in order to coerce them to adopt policies more consistent with U.S. objectives. With respect to countries that it has identified as threats to its national security, like Venezuela and Cuba, it is blocking financial transactions, particularly those that pertain to petroleum.

I talked with Dr. Fernández at the Fifth Conference of Strategic Studies, sponsored by the Center for Research on International Policy, being held from October 23 to October 25 in Havana. He said, “the United States has recently begun a new strategy of using economic instruments in an intense way for political goals, not for market goals, but for a geopolitical global rebalancing. An example was the U.S. threat against Mexico, that the U.S. would impose a tariff on Mexican goods exported to the United States, if the Mexican government did not take further steps to control immigrants who cross Mexico to enter the United States. This is the use of an economic instrument to attain a political objective, not an economic objective. In addition, the United States still has financial power that it is able to use. Such economic and financial instruments are more convenient than the use of military force, which has many negative consequences. Financial and economic instruments can be effectively implemented, because in an age of global communications, violations are not difficult to detect.”

Fernández further maintained that Donald Trump probably had a general idea of a more aggressive policy that intends to “make America great again,” and when he appointed economic advisors with a neoconservative perspective, they advised him to the specifics of the new policy, based on their familiarity with the arguments in books and reports published by neoconservative think tanks beginning in 2013.

Fernandez and I discussed the fact that the Trump administration’s ideological attack of Venezuela and Cuba has retaken anti-socialist rhetoric, which to a certain extent the U.S. public discourse had left behind, but not completely so. The nation never did truly leave behind the anti-socialist discourse, in that it did not arrive to a reformulated understanding of socialism in a context freed from the political and ideological demands of the Cold War.

Fernández further maintained that even, if Trump is not reelected in 2020, aspects of the new economic and financial war will continue, because it has its logic from the point of view of U.S. interests. He noted that the declaration of Venezuela as a threat to national security was not emitted by Trump, but by the Obama administration. Influenced by the logic of aggressive U.S. imperialism, the moderate and progressive sectors of the political establishment share with neoconservatives the distorted view that Venezuela and Cuba have authoritarian undemocratic structures that deny human rights. The moderates and progressives merely are not in agreement with some of the more aggressive strategies and policies of the Trump administration, particularly those that adversely affect the interests of historic U.S. allies.

The logic of aggressive U.S. imperialism is based on two false premises, and its logic breaks down when these premises are exposed. The false premises are, first, that it is possible for the USA to preserve its dominance. A false premise, because the relative decline of the USA is rooted in long-term practices that have reached the point of irreversibility, such as overconsumption in relation to productive capacity, overinvestment in the military, and the channeling of surplus capital to financial speculation rather than toward investment in productive capacity of the national economy. And secondly, that the neocolonial world-system itself is sustainable. Another false premise, because the world-system has geographically expanded to the point that it has overextended the ecological limits of the earth; and because the neocolonized peoples of the earth, not accepting the role that the colonial world-system has assigned to them, are in a permanent state of rebellion and revolution.

The great limitation of U.S. public discourse is that it is blind to these false premises. The duty of the U.S. Left is to expose these false premises, thereby delegitimating U.S. imperialism, by drawing upon anti-imperialist and anti-war manifestations of historic popular movements in the United States, reformulating them for the current historic moment.

This is Charles McKelvey, reflecting on the unfolding global popular socialist revolution forged by our peoples in defense of humanity.