Our world is dominated by a hierarchy of power – military, economic and financial, asserts Chris Bambery

Despite much talk of its, relative, economic decline, the United States is the single great power which can wield all three – military, economic and financial – kinds of power.

True, economically, it is matched by China, but Beijing has a long way to go to equal Washington’s military and financial clout.

It is easy to see what US military power means. Leaving aside its nuclear weapons and much more, just access a map of American military bases around the world. It will show that the US seeks to dominate rivals and challengers, such as China, by blocking its access to the Pacific and South China sea, Russia and Iran.

Its financial power centres on the preservation of the ‘international rules-based order’. That is the domination of international trade by institutions created by America in the wake of the Second World War: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and GATTS (The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade).

The latter ensured a long-term US ambition of free access to markets in the post-1945 Western world (note it retained significant trade barriers to imports from other states). In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, that access was extended across virtually all of the globe.

US economic power goes further. Because Washington has enormous levers of financial power – international trade is carried out using the US dollar, US investment banks are dominant and so on – it has used that power to re-structure the world along neoliberal lines.

First pioneered in the US by Ronald Reagan and in the UK by Margaret Thatcher, this ultra-free-market model is now prevalent. It means states and elites operate along the same lines as the US.

Let’s take a look at the City of London. It is dominated not by British finance but by US. This means this country’s elite is globalised; tied to the USA by golden and ideological threads (many have studied at elite US universities) and the UK armed forces are integrated with those of the US. That story is repeated across the globe.

Many argue that we live in a post-imperialist world because colonisation has long ended. But that was a particular phase of the imperialist age, associated with British domination. The US was never very much interested in colonies. Global free trade was what it wanted after it became first, the dominant industrial power, then the financial one.

In fact, even in the age of colonisation, great-power rivalry dominated the globe; the actual partition of the world accelerated that, leading to the First World War. Imperialism centres on the existence of the hierarchy of power I started with.

Military power is not separate from economic and financial power. If a state defies the ‘international ruled-based economy’, the US will use economic sanctions and is ready to move onto military intervention. In Ukraine, following Putin’s criminal invasion, Washington and NATO are fighting a proxy war.

But in this hierarchy, there are also regional powers whose ambitions and power fall far short of America’s but nevertheless wish to exert regional control. These are sub-imperialisms.

Today, even US military power struggles to support both Ukraine and Israel (America’s watchdog in the vital Middle East) and its military build-up in the South China Sea and the Pacific, aimed at corralling China. In this situation, regional powers have seized the chance and, away from world attention, pursued their ambitions.

So Turkey is trying to build up its regional power. That involves the continuance of its dirty war against the Kurds. In 2020, Azerbaijan defeated its neighbour Armenia and conquered Nagorno-Karabakh, leaving more than 6,600 people dead. Since then, it has ethnically cleansed its Armenian population.

Why do we not hear about this? Perhaps because Azerbaijan is a major supplier of oil and gas to the West. However, it also lies in a region where other sub-imperialisms operate: Turkey, Russia and Iran.

This is just one of many regional conflicts at play. India is permanently pitted against Pakistan over Kashmir. It also has a long running border conflict with China. All three are nuclear powers. Israel is clearly off the leash and now threatens to detonate a regional war with its attacks into Lebanon.

Imperialism, by creating a hierarchy of power, creates permanent instability because, as the fortunes of different states change, those on the up will look to change the existing division of the world in ways which lead to war. Ukraine is a good example. A regional conflict has grown into something far greater, and far more dangerous.

Even more dangerous is the alliance the US has forged with Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia and the UK against China. The warships and planes of both camps regularly collide, literally. Neither side want war, but if a plane was downed or a ship sunk, matters could easily get out of control.

Similarly, NATO expansion to the very borders of Russia, in breach of promises made by Washington when the Berlin Wall fell, means Russia (a sub-imperialism in its own right) feels encircled and threatened. That has meant it has drawn closer to China, meaning they want to create their own alliance in opposition to the US. Thus Western consternation over the potential of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), although, in truth, it has a long, long way to go to match the US and NATO.

When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, it was often said we had entered a unipolar world where the US was the sole superpower. That is not the case today. Even though China cannot yet match America’s military and financial power, it is not content and looks to drawing level in the not so distant future.

Back in 1914, Europe was divided into two armed camps with France, Russia and Britain facing off against Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Each was committed to coming to the military aid of each of its allies if they were attacked. A series of regional conflicts, particularly in the Balkans where Austro-Hungary faced Russia, threatened European war.

When the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was assassinated in Sarajevo, no one thought it would lead to European war. But Vienna blamed Serbia and declared war, Russia mobilised and Germany followed suit and thus France.

As Germany attacked into Belgium, Britain entered the fray because it could not countenance a rival power controlling the Channel coast.

The war went global. Britain’s ally, Japan, conquered German colonies in China and the Pacific. When the Ottoman Empire joined in, Britain could not let it disrupt the sea routes through the Suez Canal or the flow of oil from Persia. War came to the Middle East.

By 1917, the US was funding Britain and France’s war effort to such an extent it could not let them lose. German control of Europe was also too much for Washington to stomach. The sinking by German submarines of US vessels gave them the reason to enter the conflict.

It is worth remembering how the war ended. First, the Russian Revolution removed that country from the war, and then revolution sealed Germany’s defeat.

Looking at today’s world is a frightening experience. But there is hope. In the mass, global opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, we see the outlines of a force which can stop war and bring our rulers to heel. Let’s keep building it.

From this month’s Counterfire freesheet