November 24, 2023
I
just finished reading “Sub-Imperial Power” by Clinton Fernandes, a former
Australian intelligence officer and now professor of international and
political studies at the University of New South Wales.
Full
disclosure, Clinton sent me the book and wrote a nice dedication on it, calling
me a “public educator”, which is a nice way of saying I tweet too much 😄
But
I wouldn’t write this if I didn’t really like the book, which I actually
believe is essential reading if you want to understand Australian geopolitics,
or are interested in geopolitics generally.
The
book makes one of the best descriptions of the “rules-based international
order” that I’ve read, describing in details how Australia isn’t a vassal or a
client state of the U.S., like many believe, but rather a “sub-imperial power”.
What this means is that Australia, as well as other “sub-imperial powers” like
Israel or the UK, are essentially the henchmen of the US’s current “imperial”
rule, tasked with preserving it in their respective regions. Which means that
as henchmen they aren’t so much victims of an hegemonic US rule but instead
feel that they derive such disproportionate benefits from it that they’re
willing to go to great length to help the US preserve this rule against the
actual victims, those who disproportionately lose out from the order.
One
of the most interesting aspects of the book is how it departs from the theories
of realism, championed by the likes of John Mearsheimer or Stephen Walt, who
assert that all states - regardless of culture, religion, social hierarchy or
political system - will act in the same way because they all prioritize
survival and security above all else. They assert that given that maximizing
power is the best way to survive in the international system, if they had the
opportunity all states would seek to become hegemons like the US is today, or
imperial Britain was yesterday.
Fernandes
makes a very different case, which I actually think is a far better explanation
of how the world actually works, and of the historical behavior of various
states. His point is that there’s something unique about US geopolitics, and
that of Western colonial states before it, in that they have these extremely
aggressive characteristics - the impulse to subjugate and pillage others - that
actually often harm their security rather than safeguard it. And he explains
this with the undue power the moneyed class has over the state in those systems
of government. Which is hard to deny if one looks at things historically: for
instance it is the East India Company that initiated the colonization and
pillage of India, not the British state that only came afterwards to
essentially pacify growing rebellion in India so as to perpetuate the ongoing
pillage. Or take a more recent example: the war in Iraq. It makes very little
sense from an American security or survival perspective but it makes eminently
good sense from a US oil company or economic hegemony perspective. Or again the
current conflict in Gaza, which is extremely negative for American security as
it generates busloads of hatred throughout the Muslim world against America and
diverts American attention from more consequential geopolitical challenges. But
it makes sense if you look at it from the standpoint of perpetrating a
hegemonic system.
In
other words, Fernandes’ point is that the key characteristic of the
“rules-based international order” relates to the actual structure of the
American (or British, French, Australian, etc) social and economic system,
which seeks to enforce an order where the whole world is open to the
penetration and control of their respective national moneyed classes. Which is
why the order is about hegemony, and not about security, and why the former so
often comes at the expense of the latter.
It’s
interestingly something that John Mearsheimer often laments about if you listen
to him: “why would the U.S. act in such foolish ways that go against what my
realist theories recommend?”. He was adamantly opposed to the war in Iraq,
warned for many years about the risk of a clash with Russia in Ukraine if we
expanded NATO, and keeps speaking out against the U.S.’s unequivocal support of
Israel. And by doing so Mearsheimer actually admits that realism doesn’t quite
explain the behavior of states and that his theories are therefore not quite
right. Fernandes here offers an explanation that better predicts the actual
behavior of the US and its “sub-imperial powers”: you cannot understand states’
behavior if you limit yourself to a state-centric view, you also need to look
at the unique characteristics of their political, social and economic system.
A
last interesting point is that, given the fact he argues that states’ political
and economic systems play a key role in defining their geopolitics, Fernandes’s
book implies a prediction that as China’s power rises, it will behave in vastly
different ways than the U.S. and its imperial henchmen. Given the Chinese
system, it will undoubtedly seek to maximize its power but this time it will
actually be for its own security and survival, and not to serve the interests
of its moneyed class, and as such will behave in much less aggressive ways than
the US. Again, interestingly Mearsheimer kind of admits this too because he
repeatedly says “when I am in China, I’m amongst my people”: as in they follow
his realist theories much more faithfully than the US. We can already see the
contours of this: it’s absolutely obvious that the Chinese state isn’t at the
mercy of its moneyed class, quite the contrary, China is not exactly a country
where billionaires have an easy life 😂 Same thing with respect to hegemony: China just doesn’t do
military alliances (it doesn’t have any), foreign interference or coups
d’états. In fact they haven’t as much as fired a single bullet abroad in over 4
decades. On the contrary, it seeks to create an order with indivisible security
and mutual respect embedded in the system, where it’d ideally be the most
powerful state - sure - but not for the purpose of pillaging or subjugating
others but because this guarantees its security and stability. Which is exactly
how it behaved for 1,800 years when it was the most powerful state on the
planet before the industrial revolution: it never went around trying to
colonize and pillage the world as it believed this would eventually come at the
expense of its own security, much like it comes at the expense of American
security and interests today. Instead it sought relationships of trade and
mutual respect that maximize security and stability over the long term.
Anyhow
you should really read the book, it’s all too rare that such a book gets
written by Western academics. You typically get the usual utter bullshit about
the inherent superiority of Western values and various ill founded theories as
to why we should rule the world. This gives you a peak outside the matrix.
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