Abstract
This paper evaluates Peter Gowans musings on the topic of a U.S.-centered capitalist world-empire. Gowans heterodox concept of a capitalist world-empire is intellectually defensible. And his claim that U.S. hegemony is historically unique, because unlike previous dominant powers the U.S. has been able to distinctly mold the accumulation regimes and security environments of its would-be rivals in the core, is more than convincing. However, Gowan tends to overstate the degree to which the U.S. in the 1990s enjoyed a productive sector revival, rather than a mere super-inflation of dollar-denominated assets. This tendency prevents him from anticipating just how summarily the U.S. would ditch consensual approaches to managing the capitalistworld-economy once the Wall Street bubble collapsed, and hence from appreciating just how fed up Western European and East Asian elites would become with the predatory character of U.S. hegemony in decay. In conclusion the paper argues that while the U.S. may have neither the resources nor the credibility to politically control the global division of labor, something akin to a U.S.-East Asian geo-economic bloc may be in the process of forming. This is so because the Chinese and Japanese economic growth models remain wedded to the underwriting of the U.S. seigniorage privileges', and because past and present frictions between China and Japan stand in the way of tighter Sino-Japanese political coordination.
Highlights
This paper evaluates Peter Gowan’s musings on the topic of a U.S.-centered “capitalist world-empire.” Gowan’s heterodox concept of a “capitalist world-empire” is intellectually defensible
Gowan’s misapprehension of the speculative and illusory character of U.S economic performance during the 1990’s prevents him from understanding just how fragile U.S hegemony is, and from anticipating just how summarily the U.S would shed the benign and cooperative aspects of capitalist world leadership once global investors began to exit Wall Street. Because he does not realize just how much the hegemonic restoration of the U.S in the 1990’s was based upon the retention of seignorage privileges that have been gravely imperiled by the demise of the Wall Street bull market, Gowan tends to be too sanguine about the prospect that the U.S will transcend the normal oscillation of great power rise and fall by shepherding both Western European and East Asian big capitals into the creation of a capitalist world-empire
The first is that Europe poses the most salient threats to the twin pillars of the waning world-systemic primacy of the U.S The very recent emergence of the euro currency threatens the exceptional status of the dollar in international monetary arrangements, credit markets, and trade transactions (Henderson 2003; Sommers 2003) and the increasing Franco-German disaffection with NATO threatens the capacity of the U.S to fracture conceivably autonomous security structures in wealthy zones of the world-economy by means of what Gowan aptly calls “hub-and-spokes” alliance networks
Summary
This paper evaluates Peter Gowan’s musings on the topic of a U.S.-centered “capitalist world-empire.” Gowan’s heterodox concept of a “capitalist world-empire” is intellectually defensible.
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