K - Imperialism - Michigan 7 2023 KLAB

Imperialism K
K Lab 2023
Group Members: Arjun, Emma, Junaid, Lukas, Mateen & Omar
1NC
1NC Shell – Imperialism K
Their “fix” to the system is portrayed as a crisis averted, but in reality, it’s a crisis continued… AFF utililizes market-driven politics to uphold Euro-American dominance, cementing in a model of imperialism that structures militaristic violence and warfare into the international order
Parmar 18 Parmar, Inderjeet. Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics, and head of the Department of International Politics at City, University of London and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. “The US-Led Liberal Order: Imperialism by Another Name?” International Affairs, vol. 94, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 151–72, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iix240. Oxford Academic. Accessed 21 July 2023. //dre
For my immediate purposes, it is unnecessary to disentangle the positive from the normative, the theoretical from the practical, because this framework of thought emerges both from deep principles and also as a set of solutions to international problems, especially world wars. Hence, liberal internationalism is frequently referred to as Wilsonianism, after the internationalist programme promulgated by US President Woodrow Wilson after the First World War that included the formation of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the longer-lasting post-1945 United Nations system. I argue here that, as a theory, it operates as ideological legitimation even when its proponents offer reform; it justifies the status quo. In that regard it differs little overall from other theories like Marxism, for example, or realism. But because it is the principal system of ideas and practices, and ideals, that are used to explain, implement and defend the present international status quo, I would suggest that it elides too much to be fully validated beyond the circle of its proponents. Of course, it explains aspects of the world's functioning; but its interpretation tends to be benign: crises and challenges are explained as resolvable within the system's governing principles through socialization, integration and assimilation. I use the term liberal internationalism, then, as an amalgam to suggest that, while it is all of the above, upon reflection it serves within academia and in IR as a positive theory of how things actually are—that is, as the opposite of an ideology. It purports to be able to explain the world, at the same time as its adherents are normative supporters of the theory. I show that it is actually ideological, because it elides key factors of how the liberal world order actually works, and that other theories suggest better ways of explaining the world. In the next section of the article, I analyse liberal internationalist ideas and claims in more depth and more critically, with a view to identifying key elements of a more viable framework to explain the LIO—a critical theory influenced by the work of Antonio Gramsci and to some extent synthesized with the work of Karl Kautsky. The principal aim of this article is to identify the weaknesses of liberal internationalism in practice with the purpose of opening space for subsequent theorizing. In sum, what appears to be missing from liberal internationalism is any recognition of domestic power inequalities—such as those based on class and race—its broad attachment to (democratic) elitism, and its hierarchical approach to other powers, especially in the global South. While Wilsonian liberal internationalism is widely recognized as privileging a belief in the free movement of people, capital, goods and services, less attention has been given to its origins in a time when ‘international relations’ was overtly understood as ‘race relations’, and its consequent implication in managing overtly racialized imperial power after the First World War.14 The Wilson administration's role in racially segregating the US federal government had its foreign policy counterpart in a belief in an eventual, but far distant, self-government of the colonies and opposition to a Japanese proposal for a racial equality clause in the charter of the fledgling League of Nations.15 The development of liberal internationalism, then, was symbiotically bound to Wilson's conviction that US intervention in world affairs was essential, and to what were effectively parastatal organizations created both by the federal executive and by private foundations—the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, among others. Wilsonian ‘theory’ was practical, idealistic and ideological from the very beginning. It is also the case that, long after overt racial discourses became politically damaging, subliminal racial thinking remained—and (unconsciously) remains—a significant element of liberal internationalism, affecting its analyses of the politics of domestic and global demographic power shifts.16 Nevertheless, liberal internationalists are cosmopolitans—opposed to narrow nationalism and trade protectionism, within a US-led international system. But its core ideas—rule of law, superiority of the western idea (however lightly worn), a rules-based institutional order open to all, in principle—are deeply embedded in US political-intellectual elite think-tanks, university public policy schools, corporate media and the leaderships of both main political parties,17 the core of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment.18 Importantly, however, there are influential voices in the emerging powers and regions that support the liberal international order by calling for internal reform to take account of the changing distribution of global power away from the West and towards the ‘rest’.19 The upshot is a broad consensus around certain core ideas: that the post-1945 rules-based world order, whatever its weaknesses, serves the world well by spreading prosperity and maintaining peace; and that, although it cannot continue unreformed, the US-led system draws on deep resources—economic, military, systemic and ‘soft’—that bestow upon it continuing strengths to contain, engage, manage and socialize emerging powers. Charles Kupchan lists a range of problems requiring US leadership, even if only within a suitably reformed international system reflecting ‘the real distribution of power’.20 John Ikenberry of Princeton University, the leading proponent of this school of thought, makes significant claims as well as several unquestioned assumptions, undeveloped allusions to core powers' violent and other connections with the periphery, and a number of significant silences. He claims, for example, that the United States is a fully functioning democracy, yet fails to acknowledge evidence of the power of racialized, class-based elites. For critical theorists, such as Robert Cox, Stephen Gill and Craig Murphy,21 the international relations of elites across states and societies operate to reproduce extant patterns of power and manage or engineer change to the benefit of elites in a generally zero-sum game in which broad masses and lower classes lose out. This is clearly a far cry from liberal internationalist claims associated with the benefits of globalization, notwithstanding proposed ameliorative remedies against the harshest effects. Likewise, claims about the centrality of the rule of law occlude consideration of significant violations in practice. The question of imperial power is hardly addressed, and there is a general Eurocentric neglect of the significance of global areas beyond the core to the ‘welfare’ and cohesion of the core itself. There is a clear link between Ikenberry's overt theory of American democracy and its liberal-hegemonic world role. The United States, and the western order it built, is characterized as a pluralistic liberal market democracy that is broadly inclusive and tolerant of ethnic diversity. The US-built security community exhibits its leading state's internal character as a plural one and, very significantly, one in which the United States is bound by rules.22 Yet liberal internationalists' underlying assumptions effectively deny the findings of numerous well-researched studies challenging American democracy's principal claims.23 As far as Ikenberry and Deudney (and many others) are concerned, the ‘western idea’ is a significant part of the strength of the US-led order.24 The West, a spectacularly successful ‘civilizational heritage’, was underpinned by America's New Deal liberalism, and extended globally via Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan and NATO. In effect, this vision and programme aimed to defuse domestic class conflict and the threat of war through ‘activist government, political democracy, and international alliance’. That system is in principle capable of assimilating emerging powers, given the universalism of its values and its tolerance of ethnic differences, although others joining this privileged grouping are expected to conform to its rules and accept US leadership. Western order is exclusive also because special rules apply within its zone of peace. Beyond it, conversely, other rules apply—cruder, neo-imperial and violent, although the implications of this contrast are left unaddressed.25 By drawing a line around the West, Ikenberry cuts off the rest of the world while addressing questions about the sources of world order which, empirically, lie in a symbiotic relationship between core and periphery. Yet, even within the ‘greater’ West, Japan and South Korea were not accorded the same treatment as western Europe.26 The LIO really was conceived and developed as a system of the West and the rest, in a zero-sum game. As Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, noted on Twitter in May 2017, the whole point of ‘Euro-Atlanticism’ was to ‘prevent post-West world order’.27 Yet the claim persists that this is no empire, despite America's privileged place at the top of the ‘hierarchical political order’, because its hegemony is built on ‘consent’ and bounded by law. Power, which was necessary at the creation, faded away as consensual hegemony developed. This interpretation, of course, elides America's overwhelming military superiority, including in and over Europe. Beyond Europe, however, Ikenberry concedes that American hegemony remained hierarchical, ‘with much fainter liberal characteristics’,28 again closing off an avenue of analytical and empirical analysis that might threaten the intellectual edifice of the LIO. The (unconsciously) racialized world-view of Ikenberry's Eurocentrism is subtly buttressed by Walter Russell Mead's exploration of the significance of superior Anglo-Saxons who win wars, build world structures, and govern efficiently owing to ethno-cultural, not biological, characteristics.29 Mead's interpretation of Anglo-Saxonism makes it appear benign, assimilative and universal—a scaffolding to support Ikenberry's more overtly institutional analysis. Assimilating minorities, however, is not embracing diversity—learning from other cultures and creating something new; it is maintaining conformity to the cultures of the powerful, dominant group.30 Looking to the future, as new global powers emerge, Mead advises America to both embrace and contain them, retaining military superiority should ‘rising’ powers become ‘opponents’.31 Mead complements the prescriptions of other liberal-realist internationalists, all seeking to incorporate, assimilate and mobilize emerging powers to absorb difference and produce conformity. The liberal view is challenged by scholars who argue that the New Deal order effectively represented a political compromise, made in order to attain class peace and greater productivity, that mainly benefited major corporations while incorporating organized labour and thereby drawing its teeth. The postwar settlement was a narrow one—excluding racial minorities, unskilled and unorganized labour, and women—and relied on war and a heavily militarized economy that arose with the war in Korea and led directly to that in Vietnam.32 Liberal internationalists' accounts elide the class, gendered and racial bases of the order, both at home and abroad. Ikenberry paints an appealing picture of a liberal order that delivered material benefits and security to all, while also raising some doubts about the operation of the system, especially with regard to the inequality of rewards generated by globalization and its potential political consequences. Those consequences are regarded by Ikenberry as posing the greatest threats to the stability of the liberal order, laying bare a central mechanism and dynamic of the system itself: market-driven class inequality, exacerbated in a society in which racialized class politics is salient.33 Yet Ikenberry never mentions class, race or gender—an omission central to critical theories of the making of the LIO.34 The other key omission is the role played in building the order by violence and outright war—not just the Second World War but also the Korean War, the ‘hot’ war at the birth of the order that propelled the formation of NATO, the rearmament of Germany, the security alliance with Japan and indeed the US military–industrial complex.35 Accordingly, a key focus of consideration here is wartime planning for a new world order and the manner of its foundation as a direct result of military violence that violated the UN Charter, international law, the lessons of the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials, and the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Wars ‘out there’ secured the core ‘over here’.36 And, of course, what is referred to as benign ‘liberal internationalism’ is what Mark Mazower refers to as ‘imperial internationalism’—trying to maintain a global hierarchy established by centuries of colonial and semi-colonial rule over what is now called the global South.37 Finally, the construction of the postwar western order was constitutive of a political, social, economic and ideological ‘vital center’, as Schlesinger terms it38—opposed to both right-wing nationalists and left-wing anti-imperialists. This entailed the acceptance by core forces of the ‘New Deal order’ that the price of class harmony, stability and mobility at home was the export and continuation of inequality,39 and therefore military violence, on the periphery; and that the removal of vast quantities of raw materials required a global military basing strategy, both to protect allied trade and to deny it to adversaries.40 Ikenberry accurately notes that the internal character of the leading state in the liberal order has an impact on the international system it built; but I diverge from his presentation of this impact as the externalization of a democratic regime. He elides the racial, class and gendered character of American historical, economic and political development—including that of Wilsonianism itself.41 His conclusion, however, is accurate, even if he fails to recognize its significance in the building and maintenance of the liberal order: ‘Access to resources and markets, socioeconomic stability, political pluralism, and American security interests—all were inextricably linked.’42 The framework that may best fit the actual underlying engine of liberal order-building and maintenance, however, must also incorporate understanding of the ‘soft’ processes of socialization or incorporation. Violence is a powerful tool, but always and everywhere it is connected with the processes of non-violent elite socialization and alliance-building. It is one of the great strengths of Ikenberry's analysis of international order that elite socialization is considered so significant.43 Yet a critical view of elite socialization in the building and perpetuation of hegemony views it not as a reflection of a democratic and benign foreign policy, but as incorporation into hegemonic agendas or ‘domestication’.44 In the Gramscian perspective, capitalist Great Powers, including the United States, are deeply unequal at home and imperialistic abroad, ultimately pursuing the interests of their ruling classes and elites, whether embedded in private, public or state–private realms.45 Their hegemony is a combination of persuasion and coercion involving a ‘state–society complex’.46 Admittedly, liberalism gives an account of elite socialization processes that overlaps with Gramscian approaches. However, liberal approaches see it as relatively benign, politically neutral or representative of democracy/popular sovereignty.
The alternative is Exodus from Empire: An ethical and political reorientation from Global Empire to Global Community
Paupp 06 (Terrence E. Paupp is is an international law and human rights scholar. He holds a BA degree from San Diego State University, a Master of Theological Studies from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and a JD from the University of San Diego School of Law. Has served as professor of philosophy and international law at Southwestern College, National University, San Diego City College. National Chancellor of the US for the International Association of Educators for World Peace and has been serving as a Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) since 2006, “Exodus From Empire : The Fall of America's Empire and the Rise of the Global Community”, pp. 14-16, 2006-11-20)//LF
For the advocates of human rights, for the sake of maintaining the integrity of the international law principle of the sovereign equality of nations, and for the goal of building a humane and inclusive global order, the only viable alternative to another American Century is the vision and promise of a rising Global Community. Throughout this book, I argue that the best strategy for realizing a rising Global Community would have to be one that was dedicated to abandoning neoliberal economic models, building strong South-South regional alliances, and incorporating the people power of social movements into a national/international counterhegemonic alliance to the US Global Empire. Indeed, the power of a rising Global Community would be most dramatically and effectively manifested as the product of an emerging national/international counter-hegemonic alliance to the US Global Empire (see: Chapter 6, Claiming A “Right of Peace”—Moving Beyond the “Empire Syndrome”). In what could easily be the most succinct preamble for any document announcing the nature of this counter-hegemonic alliance, Boaventura de Sousa Santos observes: Although neo-liberal globalization—the current version of global capitalism— is by far the dominant form of globalization, it is not the only one. Parallel to it and, to a great extent, as a reaction to it, another globalization is emerging. It consists of transnational networks and alliances among social movements, social struggles, and non-governmental organizations. From the four corners of the globe, all these initiatives have mobilized to fight against the social exclusion, destruction of the environment and biodiversity, unemployment, human rights violations, pandemics, and inter-ethnic hatreds, directly or indirectly caused by neo-liberal globalization.28 In short, there are two globalizations at work in our age. The first type of globalization is supportive of the US Global Empire and the imperial project. The second type of globalization is a reaction against the US Global Empire and supportive of a variety of constituencies and issues that make possible the realization of Global Community. To comprehend the difference between these two alternative paths of globalization is to begin to understand the core thesis of this book. The main theme of my book—finding an exodus from empire—follows the general outline of analysis (as set forth above) by Santos. That is because our research and our perspective converge on how to define, conceptualize, and analyze the nature of the worldwide system of the US Global Empire. Additionally, we concur that another globalization is emerging—one that is accountable to human rights and human needs within a ris

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