US grand strategy and its contradictions

Abstract

US global expansion at the beginning of the 21st century is far more ambitious than anything pursued or imagined by previous imperial powers. American elites are presently seeking to reshape the world geopolitical terrain, with hundreds of military bases in more than 120 countries added to hundreds more installations across its own territory. This new militarism is rooted in a new imperialism, part of a grand strategy that aspires to nothing short of world domination—the project of neoconservatives that received new life with the Bush presidency and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It involves far‐reaching changes in the US armed forces, including high‐tech innovations, weaponization of space, new global flexibility, overall growth of the war economy, a bolstering of Empire through economic globalization, military interventions in the Middle East and beyond. As in the past, Empire cannot long survive without mass belief‐systems such as nationalism, religion, and political ideologies that can justify burdensome adventures and deflect public attention away from the terrible costs of war. In this context an urgent question for the fate of the planet is whether US ruling elites can for long sustain their drive toward global domination where the preferred mode of rule is military force and political coercion. It is argued here that the contradictions of US grand strategy are bound to intensify over time, leading to more social polarization, ecological crisis, blowback, and various forms of local and national resistance to Empire. These contradictions can be expected to sharpen both domestically and globally.