By CAIO BUGIATO*

Trump is the terminal symptom of American supremacy, just as the world wars were for the British. History shows: empires die when they fail to manage the contradictions they created.

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief analysis of the decline of the British (1815-1914) and American (1945-present) world orders. But before that, we will use this introduction to provide a summary critique of the concepts of world order and hegemony and explain why we use the concept of supremacy.

For the title of this article, we borrow the concept of world order from the realist theory of International Relations. According to this theory, in general terms, there is order when there is stability in international relations, that is, the absence of major wars. Stability comes from the balance of power between great powers (conceived with criteria of political and military power), which organize their zone of dominance and establish a situation of equality of forces with other powers.

Orders are cyclical and can be, in content, unipolar, bipolar and multipolar, which are when there is a single State as a great power, when it is marked by the dispute between two great powers and when it involves the existence of multiple centers of power, respectively. However, we consider the concept of order to be inadequate to deal with international politics.

In the Weberian sense, an important reference for this theory, (social) order is the set of norms, rules and values ​​that regulate interactions between agents, who find regularity and predictability in it and therefore legitimize it; the State is central to the establishment of order. In the international context, in addition to the absence of a global State, there does not seem to be regularity and predictability as in the national context, in any type of order.

Another inadequate concept is that of hegemonic order or simply hegemony, followed by the Gramscian tradition. (i) Hegemony would need the world capitalist State to function transnationally, as Antonio Gramsci claims when discussing the integral State. (ii) The supposed consensus established in a world hegemonic order does not seem to us to have the ideological strength that it has in a national social formation, given, in addition to the absence of the world State, the partial nature of the reach of hegemonic apparatuses, as well as the resistance to them.

Was there order or hegemony during the Concert of Europe (1815-1914), the Cold War (1945-1991) and/or today? These periods were marked by conflicts, wars, resistance, rebellions and revolutions. We understand that there may be periods of regularity, predictability and consensus in relations between two or a group of States, but not on a global scale. Perhaps a global order or hegemony is possible with the existence of a single highly powerful State, but this is not what the history of capitalism shows us.

That is why we use the concept of supremacy, which means the transnational projection of economic, political and ideological power of a capitalist state, based on the power of its dominant classes and class fractions, which subjugates other political units. We believe that this concept is more appropriate, since, first, total world orders, involving all or most of the states and dominant classes of the international system, have never existed; at most there have been partial “world orders.”

In this sense, supremacy reveals the power of one or more states and the formation and dynamics of their zone of dominance, which possibly establishes conflicts with other states and classes. For example, since the advent of the capitalist mode of production and its drive to expand throughout the world, the British “world order” consisted of an empire, but it faced challenges, disputes and attacks mainly from European powers.

The USA, despite its Atlantic “world order” after 1945, faced resistance from the USSR and China – the most significant in state terms –, restricting its supremacy at best to the entire West.

Let us look at the declines of these two (so-called) world orders.

Supremacy and rivalries of the British Empire

The world’s first capitalist state, England, built the British Empire first with a foreign policy of “free trade” and then, based on the development of its productive forces, through other economic means that characterized an imperialist international projection, such as capital investment. The formation of the empire – the conquest and control of territories and peoples that came to be dominated by a central political unit – and the interventions in other political units were certainly conducted by force and state diplomacy.

In this case, the British navy in particular played a crucial role in occupations, annexations and incorporations of colonies to form the empire on which the sun never sets. This gunboat diplomacy, so present in imperial Brazil with trade and friendship treaties and interference in the internal affairs of the court, defeated the main competitor – Napoleonic France – and reigned between the outbreak of the Vienna System (1815) and the First World War (1914), at least outside Europe.

We said outside Europe because in the Old Continent and also in relation to the USA and Japan, the British were unable to carry out an economic and cultural penetration, supported by military and diplomatic power, in these States in order to coordinate with governments and dominant classes (capitalists and pre-capitalists) the belts of the empire's gears.

In these states, the process of uneven and combined development of capitalism, starting in England itself, took the form of an autonomous and national structure, through transnational and national class struggles. Thus, the rivals of the English formed their own empires or zones of dominion, and the conflicts between them, both economic and geopolitical rivalries – some inherited from the past – led to imperialist competition and the adoption of protectionist measures.

These formed the tax base of these states, as well as instruments of protection for the nascent bourgeoisie and working classes. In this context, then, British supremacy and its apparatus were not capable of guaranteeing an interpenetration of capital accumulation processes within each state at the center of world capitalism.

Consequently, inter-imperialist rivalries led to world war and the collapse of the British Empire, largely due to Britain's inability to mediate conflicts and organize the contradictions generated by the development and expansion of the capitalist mode of production between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. In short: the end of the empire was linked to Great Britain's inability to incorporate new capitalist powers, such as Germany, the USA and Japan, into the imperialist system of the so-called pax britannica, which was anything but peaceful.

US supremacy and globalization

What the British did not do, the Americans did and perfected. After the end of the Second World War, they were able to organize interpenetrations of capital accumulation processes within each state. Led by the state and by fractions of the ruling class, the United States conducted what we call the internalized and induced reproduction of capital mainly in European social formations, with broad benefits for American capital, but also with counterparts.

A true economic and cultural penetration, supported by military and diplomatic power. In agreement with the most internationalized bourgeois fractions of each European country, US diplomacy and the bourgeoisie boosted the expansion of their transnational companies with direct foreign investment in production and services, demonstrating a capacity for penetration never seen before, accompanied by the ideology of American way of life Hollywood.

The Bretton Woods international architecture, based on the supremacy of the dollar, the gold standard, fixed exchange rate trade, low tariffs and direct investment, together with the capital-labor pact, led central capitalism into an era of growth and prosperity. In political and military relations, inter-imperialist rivalries gave way to international institutions of cooperation such as NATO, the European Union and other organizations, vis a vis the USSR.

On the one hand, Europe was undergoing a process of Canadianization, of the formation of an imperialist chain led by the USA, in which its countries remained as junior partners, although imperialist relations of force remained between the class fractions of different countries. On the other hand, this same imperialist chain operated in peripheral countries within the framework of exploitation, domination and alienation, with direct and indirect interventions, shady sponsorships, coups d'état and military operations, in the service of the States and the central bourgeoisies.

Therefore, the call Pax Americana – which was far from peaceful – originated from learning from the British inability to combine the internationalization of capital accumulation processes with the organization of Western capitalism, under US supremacy.

The challenge to US supremacy appeared in various forms in the post-war decades, but we draw attention to the struggles of the working classes and oppressed peoples, whether for better living conditions or alternatives to capitalism, or for national liberation or autonomous development. We also draw attention to a process of inflation and overaccumulation of capital in the face of low profit rates, which displeased the different fractions of the bourgeoisie in the central states, in the context of the Bretton Woods architecture.

The solution to this was the neoliberal program, which, in addition to reconfiguring Western capitalism, maintained the supremacy of the United States. The program, incorporated and implemented in the central states, in the imperialist chain, generally dismantled the capital-labor pact: it destroyed public services, social rights and the political organization of the working class and promoted the liberalization of finance, trade and privatization, providing a way out of the overaccumulation of capital.

In this context, the protectionist measures of the past were considered obsolete in the face of the world market's mantra of economic openness. With such liberalization and the strategic defeat imposed on the USSR, US supremacy extended to countries that were not yet in its orbit, particularly the businesses of fractions of the American bourgeoisie established themselves in countries that were previously unimaginable.

The internalized and induced reproduction of US capital, together with political and military agreements, under the aegis of the neoliberal program, produced a neoliberal globalization at the end of the 20th century. The (re)organization of global capitalism, the organization of interpenetrations of capital accumulation processes within each State, continued and extended under US supremacy, under the aegis of neoliberalism.

Decline of US supremacy?

The US neoliberal state and globalization have brought US diplomacy, war and corporations to every corner of the planet. Driven by an internationalist faction, a big imperialist bourgeoisie, and represented mainly by the Democratic Party, the internationalization of capital accumulation processes has shaped international relations in the image and likeness of this imperialist faction for decades.

However, at the domestic level, the State destroyed the rights and guarantees of the working classes and globalization ruined the business of the big national bourgeoisie (protectionist and nationalist), industrialization and job creation. Furthermore, a process of fascistization, as we discussed in another article,[I] He chose the Chinese as enemies of the “nation” due to their participation in the national market, progressive social movements – such as feminist and black movements – due to their struggles for recognition and rights, and immigrants for supposedly occupying jobs not intended for them.

Donald Trump's government was elected and represents a reactionary stance towards this situation, at the service of a large national bourgeoisie that has lost a lot with neoliberal globalization.

Donald Trump's government believes that the current world order has brought costs, wars and the rise of new powers to the US, and that it is therefore necessary to replace the post-war liberal order with a new US supremacy, based on unilateral economic and military power. The government opposes the global arrangements that the US itself has built (UN, WTO, NATO, among others), which would harm sovereignty, companies and workers and generate onerous maintenance costs for the public coffers.

Donald Trump has already announced to European leaders that the US will no longer be the guarantor of European security, which should be the responsibility and funding of Europeans themselves. In addition, he has broken off partnerships with Europe and Asia, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, designed by previous governments. Among other measures that undermine the organization of global capitalism built in the post-war period.

In yet another chapter of this “deglobalization,” Donald Trump’s government imposed trade tariffs (Liberation Day) to several countries, with the aim of reversing “bad trade agreements” and the internationalization of the economy, after decades of displacement abroad, and rebuilding national production. Donald Trump demands advantageous relations for the United States, given that for his government the American market is quite open to the outside world, but his peers harm the country with trade barriers and tariffs.

This ignores or even undermines the multilateral trade system of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The criteria for tariffs follow the formula in which the trade deficit in goods between the United States and a given state is divided by the value of U.S. imports to that state, and then this number is divided in half. But for Asian countries, such as China, this number increases in line with economic and geopolitical rivalry, the projection of power and interpenetration in the U.S. market.

The supremacy that Donald Trump's government is trying to reconfigure, now for the second time, is demolishing the organization of the interpenetration of capital accumulation processes within each state, a process led by the United States in the past. This unilateral supremacy tends to repeat the situation of British supremacy and provoke inter-imperialist rivalries, which led to the world war and the downfall of the empire.

Therefore, there is indeed a tendency for Donald Trump's government to be the agent of the end of American supremacy as we have known it in recent decades. Even if the government backs down and/or is defeated in the next elections, the "damage" seems to be done. Its allies and partners, states and fractions of the ruling class with whom the US governments built their supremacy, the imperialist chain and the organization of capitalism, have lost trust in such a way that the international system seems to have reached the point of no return.

* Caio Bugiato is a professor of Political Science and International Relations at UFRRJ and in the Postgraduate Program in International Relations at UFABC.

Note

[I] https://aterraeredonda.com.br/donald-trump-e-o-nazismo/

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