The position of Australia in a rapidly changing and increasingly dangerous world is an important subject for scholarly study. In geopolitical terms, it involves Australiaâs role in the US-led neoliberal globalised economy and international foreign affairs, and the challenges posed by the rise of Chinese power, the emergence of other players such as Russia, India, and various Latin American states, and the rise of alternative theories as to what constitutes a stateâs best interests. Domestically, the strains on Australian democratic policies to deal with climate change, growing corporate power and malfeasance, and increasing inequality, among other issues, are also in need of analysis. In all this, the perspective of national self-interest and realism provides a sharp analytical tool and potentially beneficial alternative policies.
Geopolitics is a well-established field of academic study. It consists of a number of analytical frameworks and world views to explain the planetary organization and relations of humans in the modern world. The first has its roots in the imperial ideology of Western domination of the world. Harold Mackinder was an advocate of British imperialism and an influential writer in the field of imperial expansion. During his long career as a teacher and politician he was the director of the London School of Economics from 1903 to 1908. Mackinder was concerned with the implications of unequal economic growth and unchecked territorial and economic expansion. He argued that the âthe great wars of history ⊠are the outcome, direct or indirect of the unequal growth of nationsâ (Mackinder, 1942/1962: xviii). Geopolitical reality was such, he explained, âas to lend itself to the growth of empires, and in the end of a single World-Empireâ (ibid: xix). He was a proponent for âthe deliberate control of economic growth in accord with a universal planâ (ibid: 1â2). Other approaches to geopolitics focus either on the power relations of states in a hierarchical world system or on the dynamics of the global economy such as globalisation within a world-system (Johnston et al., 2000: 310â311).
A major academic school of critical geopolitics is represented by the extensive works of Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky on power and social justice. In a debate with Chomsky on Dutch television in 1971, Foucault was critical of the use of democracy to describe Western societies and said, âwe are very far from democracy. It is only too clear that we are living under a regime of a dictatorship of class, of a power of class which imposes itself by violence, even when the instruments of this violence are institutional and constitutionalâ (Chomsky & Foucault, 2006: 39). He argued that the task in society is to âcriticize the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against themâ(ibid: 41). Chomsky also maintained that the task was to clearly understand and communicate the nature of power and oppression. Chomskyâs world view required that:
every form of authority and domination and hierarchy, every authoritarian structure, has to prove that itâs justifiedâit has no prior justification ⊠These questions should be askedâand the person who claims the legitimacy of the authority always bears the burden of justifying it. And if they canât justify it, itâs illegitimate and should be dismantled. (Mitchell & Schoeffel, 2002: 201â202)
The construction of the modern worldâs political economy is articulated by periods of transition when the existing hegemonic power is in a period of perceived or real decline because of the rise of new concentrations of economic, political, and military power. Chomsky has argued that the first global hegemony in history was the control by white peoples of the world (Chomsky, 2010: 4). He quotes military historian Geoffrey Parker who wrote, âIt was thanks to their military superiority, rather than to any social, moral or natural advantage, that the white peoples of the world managed to create and control, however briefly, the first global hegemony in Historyâ(Chomsky, 1993: 8). The second global hegemony was the rise and dominance of the world system by the United States of America (US), reaching a high point with the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991.
Hegemony
In their contributions on âHegemony and Rivalry in the World-System: Trends and Consequences of Geopolitical Realignments, 1500â2025â, sociologists Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver argued that hegemonic transitions were periods of world disorder and conflict (Arrighi & Silver, 1999). Their analysis of hegemonic crises highlighted three major interrelated but distinct processes: âthe intensification of interstate and interenterprise competition; the escalation of social conflicts, and the interstitial emergence of new configurations of powerâ (ibid: 30). Major critical studies on the current hegemonic crisis emphasise the dynamics and evolution of global capitalism and the role of the political economy of the American empire, particularly in its leading role in the financialisation of the global economy, the global redistribution of wealth and income, and the global financial crisis of 2007 (DumĂ©nil & LĂ©vy, 2011; Foster & Magdoff, 2009; Panitch & Gindin, 2012).
Hegemonic transitions are crises of legitimacy in the world order. They are periods of world disorder and conflict and âincreasingly dysfunctional social conflict, leading to periods of systemwide rebellions, state breakdowns and revolutions ⊠transforming the world-scale balance of class forcesâ (Silver & Slater, 1999: 152â153). One process at work is the growth and toxicity of both the intranational and international uneven economic development and the polarisation of wealth (Milanovic, 2005; Therborn, 2017). Another is the role of the militarisation of US foreign policy where the priorities of the military-industrial complex dominate the national state and its use of military power for the purpose of economic domination. The election of Donald Trump as president of the US has been likened to a tendency towards âneo-Bonapartismâ, which sociologist Dylan Riley defines as
a form of rule that substitutes a charismatic leader for a coherent hegemonic project. Like the original nineteenth-century version, this latter-day Bonapartism is linked to a crisis of hegemony ultimately stemming from the erosion of the material base that allows the American capitalist class to pursue its own interests while claiming to represent those of society in general. (Riley, 2017: 21â22)
Political economists Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin argue that global capitalism is a US project that has gradually unfolded since the late nineteenth century (Panitch & Gindin, 2012). Panitch and Gindin maintain that the foundations of US power are solid and that the unmaking of global capitalism âwill only be possible if the states that have made it are themselves transformedâand that applies, above all, to the American stateâ (ibid: 340). Their work disentangles the concept of imperialism from the concept of capitalism by focusing on the role of the US empire and emphasising the exceptional role of the âAmerican state in the creation of a fully global capitalismâ (ibid: 1). Panitch and Gindin claim that the US hegemonic decline is an illusion. The reality, however, is that imperial power is always undermined by various counter-powers which contest its mandate and strength and by corruption within, as well as undermined by processes which impose high economic costs and severely limit growth in the destruction of the biosphere (McCoy, 2017).
The emancipation of East Asia from Western dominance is the most critical aspect of an ongoing hegemonic transition and crisis. China is the most dynamic centre of economic growth and capital accumulation in the world, and its inexorable growth is a harbinger of the dominance of Asia in the near future. The question, however, is the possibility of transforming the modern world of nation-states into a commonwealth of civilisations, reflecting the dynamics of changes in the balance of power. Can the US, Europe, and the Indian subcontinent peacefully adapt to a reemerging China-centred civilisation? The danger has been succinctly argued by political scientist David Calleo that the âinternational system breaks down not only because unbalanced and aggressive new powers seek to dominate their neighbors, but also because declining powers, rather than adjusting and accommodating, try to cement their slipping pre-eminence into an exploitative hegemonyâ (Calleo, 1987: 142).
The greatest challenge to the globalisation of the world economy and the imbalance of power is the ethnic-racial revolution, eroding the white majorityâs domination of the worldâs economy and political power. The US is rapidly moving towards a post-white majority of Indigenous Americans, and people of African, Asian, and Latin descent. It implies a more profound transfer of power initiated with the presidency of Barack Obama. Historian Theodore White in The Making of the President 1960 elaborated on the conundrum of the American identity arguing that âAmerica is a great nation created by all the hopeful wanderers of Europe not out of geography, but out of purposeâby all men sought in fair government and equal opportunity ⊠if America falters in greatness and purpose, then Americans are nothing but the off-scourings and hungry of other landsâ (White, 1961: 422). A majority of humans are now awake to a new reality of a world of civilisations dictated by Western military hegemony. Uncontained power of a Euro-US centred universe is increasingly opposed because it continues to be perceived as white global hegemony. A new power configuration of power and remembrance/memories will eventually emerge and likely rewrite history in ways unthinkable today.
In the past, the rise and fall of hegemonic power has been accompanied by extensive warfare. Among the most destructive wars are global wars. US military dominance is the outcome of three world wars, including the Cold War. These wars, according to William R. Thompson , were âfought to decide who will provide systemic leadership, whose rules will govern, whose policies will shape systemic allocations processes, and whose sense or vision of order will prevailâ (Thompson, 1988: 7). Global war s are also âsignificant âcogsâ in the political economy âmachineryâ that structure global politics and economicsâ (Rasler & Thompson, 2000: 301). Past global wars led to the end of the British Empire, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the rise and hegemony of the US empire. There is an ongoing global war generated by a complex set of circumstances closely linked to the global political economy structuring US hegemony. It is fought by many actors in many localities. US policy for planetary domination is responsible for waging many wars to consolidate and expand gains in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, and to counter emerging great powers in Russia, China, and Iran, as well as other forces opposing it (Bacevich, 2011; Booth & Dunne, 2002). Transcending the geopolitics of the global economy is a worldwide emancipatory struggle waged by people in all countries against existing social and political institutions and structures which impose harms on people and in their demands for social and political justice (Wright, 2010).
In recent times, the growth and diffusion of humans worldwide went with the expansion of economic and political-military power cores and their competition and struggle, mainly by warfare. The construction of the modern world system becomes more clearly defined with the history of ambitious and deadly struggle by major powers to construct and expand their economic and political power to control parts of the earth. The initial phase in the diffusion of European people and power is the conquest and colonisation of the world, first by the Spanish and Portuguese and later by Russian, Dutch, English, French, and other Europeans. The period of empire building and world colonisation was driven by various utopian projects about bringing Christian salvation to barbarians and later about their rights to civilise and enlighten non-whites. Driving conquest was population pressure and the acquisition of wealth allied with a warrior-class passion for power and destruction. European competition for wealth and power led t...