Imperialism Kritik Index
Alternative: Ethical Rejection
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Alternative: Ethical Rejection( ) Imperialism is THE primary ethical question of our time – we have an obligation to speak out against global injustice in anticipation of the general crisis in imperial order.Martin, 2008 [Bill Martin Jr., professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. 2008, pg 187-189] The imperialist world system works through exploitation and domination; when the existing circuits of capital are no longer served by existing national boundaries, then these boundaries are redrawn through military action. There can be no doubt what another world war could mean for our planet, and, even in the case where the main contenders in such a war are, to speculate, China and India, it is the imperialist system as a "world-system" that will drive things in this direction—and those global powers that are the most ravenous (first among them the United States) are the driving force of this dynamic. ¶ The previous crises of the imperialist system also represented openings, and out of these openings came the revolutions in Russia and China (and many other revolts against colonialism that, despite the fact that they did not ultimately succeed in overturning neocolonial domination, still caused the imperialist countries to address the ways they went about the business of dominating the Third World). Despite everything, and against distortions and outright lies, these revolutions represented fundamental advances against and beyond the imperialist system. (I will return to this question directly in the third section below.) Be that as it may, these revolutions are long past, something of a closed chapter, and, in any case, the imperialism and postmodern capitalism of the United States barely resembles the imperialism of Czarist Russia, to say nothing of China when it was dominated by colonialism, imperialism, and semi-feudal social relations. Despite this, there are lessons of struggle and transformation that ought to be brought forward (both positive and "negative" lessons, of course). And yet the fact is that U.S. imperialism has yet to experience a crisis that would rock the system to its very foundations. Indeed, the last deep systemic crisis occurred before the era of imperialism proper (in the systemic sense of capitalism as a comprehensive, global mode of production): the Civil War of 1861-1865. This is not to say that the Great Depression and the period from the rise of the Civil Rights movement and then everything we associate with the sixties did not shake the foundations. Indeed, with the right kind of understanding and leadership the upheavals of these periods might have gone a good deal further. But it might also be said that U.S. imperialism has done a splendid job, on the whole, of learning the lessons of the sixties, especially. My larger point, apart from the particularities of history, struggle, and strategy "since 1968" (or whenever) is that U.S. imperialism—or, the world imperialist system, but with the United States as its lynchpin—remains both the context of our largest ethical questions (and indeed itself the largest ethical question, the United States as "ethical problem"), and the toughest nut to crack. ¶ Is there a kind of historical dialectic here, one that Kant would have been quite ready to recognize? The hardest thing turns out also to be that which is the most pressing ethical concern, and vice-versa. The most pressing ethical concern is the hardest thing not only to accomplish, but even to thematize, even to begin to get people to grapple with. Thus, on the one hand, the trivializations of much academic discourse on "ethics," and, at the level of structural analysis of the world system, the sense that ethics has nothing to do with the "real workings" of . . . "things," or "power." Certainly there are ways in which power and "things" work, and there are subtleties here that go far beyond "billiard-ball causality." Even while these workings have to be studied and understood and grappled with from a strategic perspective, it is precisely the reduction to causal "thingness" that is the essence of economism, or, to put the point the other way around, it is the complete setting aside of any role for consideration of the thing that ought to be done, in some matrix of pure causality and interest, that is the essence of economism. Lenin saw this, in his critique of economism, and yet, out of the orthodox Marxist refusal of the ethical, did not thematize the point this way. As Steven Lukes argued forcefully in Marxism and Morality (and others as well, such as Norman Geras, in Discourses of Extremity), this refusal has had consequences, indeed dire consequences. I would say that, while this limitation does not cancel the real achievements of the Russian and Chinese revolutions (in their actual socialist periods), overcoming this limitation is absolutely essential for any future Marxist project. Overcoming this limitation is absolutely essential for any future Marxism, for that matter, but I take the first overcoming as more important, as this has to do with the future of our world, and not just the future of a particular radical social theory. Alternative: Peaceful Decline from Power Good( ) A gradual reduction of US influence in East Asia is a prerequisite to reducing the risk of escalation of conflicts in Asia.Glaser, 2015 [John Glaser, researcher in Washington, DC. He has been published in the Washington Times, Reason, The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, The American Conservative, and the Daily Caller, among other outlets. “The Ugly Truth About Avoiding War With China.” December 28, 2015. http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-ugly-truth-about-avoiding-war-china-14740] The struggle for primacy in East Asia is not fundamentally one for security or tangible economic benefits. What is at stake is largely status and prestige. As the scholar William Wohlforth explains, hegemonic power transitions throughout history actually see the rising power seeking “recognition and standing rather than specific alterations in the existing rules and practices that constituted the order of the day.” In Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War, for example, “the rise of Athens posed unacceptable threats not to the security or welfare of Sparta but rather to its identity as leader of the Greek world.” Similarly, the power transition between a rising Germany and a dominant Great Britain in the lead up to World War I was characterized by an “absence of tangible conflicts of interests.” U.S. paranoia over the rise of China is less about protecting significant strategic and economic returns, which are marginal if not actually negative, and more about a threat to its status, prestige and reputation as the world’s sole superpower. In no way is that a just cause for war.¶ In contrast to today’s foreign policy, in which the United States maintains a global military presence and routinely acts on behalf of peripheral interests, a more prudent approach would define U.S. interests more narrowly and reserve U.S. intervention for truly vital national interests. Joseph M. Parent and Paul K. MacDonald advocate retrenchment, which includes deep cuts to the defense budget and a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe and Asia. “Faith in forward defenses is a holdover from the Cold War,” they argue, “rooted in visions of implacable adversaries and falling dominoes [that] is ill suited to contemporary world politics.” Barry Posen similarly argues the United States “should reduce, not increase, its military presence” in response to China’s rise. By narrowing U.S. commitments in the region, wealthy and capable allies can take responsibility for their own defense and balance against China. Meanwhile, the United States can extricate itself from potentially perilous entangling alliances. Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2012 2012 -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? 2012 -> Aa and na members Dying from Tobacco 2012 -> [Baby Crying] 01: 04 [Ching 2012 -> Unit Name / Nom de l’unité uic / ciu dates 2012 -> What We Owe Jehovah’s Witnesses 2012 -> Oceans Challenge Badge 2012 -> Canadian cycling olympians 2012 -> Greg landry, june olkowski and tom lysiak 2012 -> William goldman 2012 -> Does translocation and restocking confer any benefit to the European eel population? A review Download 258.11 Kb. Share with your friends:
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