Can the EU be viewed as a viable 'launch platform' for a socialist alternative to a future of imperialist barbarism on a global scale which can be the only outcome of the USUK alliance if it is allowed to succeed in its plans for global domination (assuming of course, that it doesn’t result in the complete collapse of the international order)?

There are, I believe, five major and interconnected facets upon which I base the above contention:

1. The divergence between USUK’s imperialist ambitions and the EU’s ‘post-imperialist’ position.
2. The challenge to dollar hegemony by the Euro.
3. The more realistic view of the EU over the crisis of global climate change.
4. A rejection of the commodification of life best expressed in the battle over GM and the rejection on the part of Europe’s population of the commodification of DNA
5. A growing majority of global opinion opposed to the insane policies of the neo-imperialists

I argue that a viable socialist programme can be developed based upon an understanding of the implications of these five key elements as a basis for economic and political transformation and on a global scale.

1. The divergence between USUK’s imperialist ambitions and the EU’s ‘post-imperialist’ position

I have referred to this aspect in the two earlier essays and I rely in part, on the analysis of those imperialist theorists who fearfully, have articulated what I believe to be an accurate assessment of what they see as the ‘danger’ represented by ‘old Europe’s’ rejection of some kind of alliance such as the one the UK has forged with the US. Indeed, they go as far as to label it as a genuine danger to the ‘neo-imperialist’ project. As Robert Kagan puts it,

"[T]he other, equally important part of Blair's strategy has been to convince Europe to behave responsibly and courageously in a still dangerous world, to acquire the military capacity, and the will to use military force, as essential to the defence and promotion of that same international legal order."

And,

"Blair's problem, in short, has not been his inability to influence the US. It is has been his inability to influence France and Germany. And the risk in Blair's strategy is not that he has placed his fate in the hands of George W Bush - it is that he has also placed his fate in the hands of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder."
The Healer by Robert Kagan

An objective that Blair has failed to achieve and moreover, with the failure of the USUK alliance to convince the UNSC to get ‘onboard’ the occupation of Iraq, the imperialist project has suffered a double setback. Clearly this represents a fundamental break with the USUK imperialists, even if one can debate the reasons. The important thing to take note of are the implications of the break and what kind of strategy should the left adopt as a result?

In part, the divergence between USUK and the EU is based upon the very real fear that the major states of the EU feel — that the USUK’s sectarian imperialist project is destabilising the emerging global economy and, as with the collapse of 1929, threatens to drag Europe and the entire world down with it.

And the signs are here for all to see. The ‘war on terror’ is an expression of a corrupt and desperate US capitalism that is all too aware of the fact that uncontrolled growth without unlimited access to the key resource needed to propel it – cheap oil – is untenable. And although the US’s hegemonic control of oil via the petro-dollar threatens the EU’s economy, the fact that the EU has refused to militarise its major economies, has to some degree, enabled it to insulate itself against the coming economic meltdown of US capitalism. But whether the establishment of a rival currency will be enough, remains to be seen.

And increasingly, there are elements within the ruling US elite who are only too aware of the dangerous nature of the adventurist strategies of the Bush oil/military alliance, the question is, are they strong enough to challenge the Bush clique and in possession of a viable alternative to offer a frightened population? Currently, the answer has to be no, at least if it is to come from within the Democratic Party, tied as it is to the fate of the US/Israeli imperialist project to control the Middle East. And current statements by the Israeli government to use its nuclear arsenal if it feels its existence is 'threatened' without a word of opposition being uttered by the Democratic Party only reinforce this view.

Are there other options? The problem is rooted in the assault on civil liberties, the increasingly militarised nature of US society (what some are calling a 'pre-fascist' state), the total incorporation of the dominant media into the state’s agenda and is further compounded by the crisis of the domestic economy and the bankrupt state of the federal government.

It is disputable that a ‘space’ exists for a viable challenge from an independent candidate given the stranglehold that the corporate media has on the ‘election’ process. And without a radical alternative to the current insane drive to maintain an open-ended and expansionist production/consumption economy that is based on cheap oil and irrational consumerism, the outlook is, to say the least, bleak.

There are no historical comparisons for the current crisis of US capital which in order to maintain a level of profit for the handful of giant corporations that bankroll Bush, has effectively destroyed the domestic economy and in so doing, has created a major competitor, China that now threatens to challenge the global dominance of US imperialism, not only through its advanced and extremely cheap production processes but perhaps just as important, its need for vast quantities of cheap energy needed to power its expanding industrial economy. And the key is that the bulk of its production is tied to supplying the gaping maw of the US economy rather than the needs of its own, largely rural population.

What we call globalism, is the end result of a process that has been in place for the past thirty years. Put simply, the de-industrialisation of America came about in order to reduce the cost of production and over this thirty year period, the revolution in information technology has facillitated the process in ways that were simply unforeseen thirty years ago. By exporting the bulk of its domestic industries to cheap labour markets, the US has effectively 'hollowed' out its own economy in exchange for short-term profits.

By relying on its ownership of intellectual property rights (patents and so forth), control of global financial services, the US exposes itself to the oscillations of an extremely unstable world economic system, a system made all the more unstable by the virtually bankrupt US domestic economy.

2. The challenge to dollar hegemony

The role of the internal combustion engine, at first sight, an innocuous product of industrialism, is so central to the 20^th century and the two major wars that have determined the destinies of all of us, that it probably needs its own investigation.

That a single product could have had such a profound effect on the development of a country – and eventually the entire planet – is perhaps difficult to comprehend, but it is a fact. Moreover, the development of the internal combustion engine is organically connected to the growth of the military/industrial complex, a process that has its roots in WWI, upon which US capitalism’s economic dominance throughout the 20^th century is based.

A process that came to fruition during WWII and the rise of the aircraft industry which in turn triggered the development of the Information Technology revolution, firstly through the invention of numerically controlled machine tools and then the development of nuclear weapons and missile technology which in turn spurred the development of computers. One extremely important book comes to mind that deals with this issue in detail, "Forces of Production" by David Noble, a former professor at MIT that is well worth reading for the connections it reveals between revolutions in production and the political processes that underpin the Cold War.

Control of oil is of course central to the strategic economic interests of US capitalism and the corresponding dependence on the automobile industry for growth. So intrinsic is the automobile that is has become the bedrock of the US economy, affecting almost every aspect of life especially the building and construction industry. It has determined patterns of growth and development from suburban sprawl to the centrality of the advertising/media business in promoting never-ending consumption, especially of energy and the production of consumer products that use energy.

A single fact illustrate the centrality of energy consumption to the US economy:

• Greater Los Angeles consumes more electricity than the entire Indian sub-continent

Breaking the grip of the oil industry is the single most important aspect of the struggle to defeat US imperialism and again, we see the effects of the ‘split’ between the EU and the US. Per capita energy use in the EU is 1/3^rd less than that of the US. The growing realisation that total dependence on oil has to be reduced may well be self-interest on the part of a more ‘enlightened’ European capitalist class, but so what? And it may well be that it also stems from competition between European and US capitalists. But perhaps more important is the fact that the populations of Europe are demanding more rational economic policies from their rulers, a demand that the political classes of Europe ignore at their peril.

Ever since the first energy ‘crisis’ of 1973, the role of the major oil producing countries, represented by OPEC has occupied the US power elite almost to the exclusion of everything else. Although forced to strike a deal with OPEC this doesn’t mean that the US has accepted the status quo as the invasion of Iraq so forcefully illustrates.

It is the growing realisation that oil is a diminishing and non-renewable resource and that controlling it is the number priority of US imperialism. Successive US presidents starting with Lyndon Johnson have been the creatures of the oil industry and over time, the role of the oil industry in determining US policy has grown dramatically. The process has been accelerated by mergers and takeovers and the convergence brought about by the IT revolution between previously discrete sectors of the economy.

As I have pointed out elsewhere, the US has been able to bankroll its military onslaught on controlling the world’s resources through the use of the petro-dollar. As the noted economist Henry C Lui puts it,

The Euro represents the only alternative to the petro-dollar and as such, should it replace or rival the dollar as a means of global exchange for goods and services, it represents a real threat to the US economy, a threat that the US simply cannot afford. In part, the role of the Euro also explains the UK’s dithering over whether to switch over to it, given the UK’s major role in the oil industry, second only to the US.

3. The more realistic view of the EU over the crisis of global climate change.

"I don't think there is [a solution to the energy shortage]. The solution is to pray. Pray for mild weather and a mild winter. Pray for no hurricanes and to stop the erosion of natural gas supplies. Under the best of circumstances, if all prayers are answered there will be no crisis for maybe two years. After that it's a certainty."

"What that means, in the starkest possible terms, is that we are no longer going to be able to grow."
Matthew Simmons, the CEO of the world's largest energy investment bank, Simmons & Company International.

These are the words of the representative of a class that believes in the coming apocalypse and anyone reading this should be very frightened at the idea that the most powerful nation on earth is now ruled by a political class that believes in Armageddon.

The 1992 Rio Conference on Climate Change was an historical watershed for the planet. For the first time, the leaders of many of the major economies of the world recognised that uncontrolled growth based on the exponential consumption of hydrocarbons represented a real threat to the future of the biosphere. A recognition that catastrophes were no longer limited to countries or even regions, but affected the entire planet. Every major economy except the United States not only recognised this reality but also, if reluctantly, recognised that real and meaningful steps needed to be taken to reverse or at least stabilise global warming at the then current level. This has not happened, indeed the production of greenhouse gases has increased and global warming has accelerated since 1992.

The threat of global climate change is the third element of the growing split between the EU and the US. It is now beyond dispute that global warming is leading to a potential catastrophe, especially for the poor countries of the world. At first sight, one could argue that the EU, with its advanced economies is better positioned to deal with the potential of climate change, but as the past year has shown, a single summer of drought and high temperatures in Europe has led to a drastic fall in food production, rising international prices for grain and other basic foodstuffs. Another year of the same extremes of weather could spell disaster for the EU’s agricultural production and drastically alter international trade in basic foodstuffs with dire results for the entire planet.

It is perhaps indicative of just how out of touch the US elite is with reality that in spite of all the evidence, it refuses to acknowledge that climate change threatens not only the livelyhoods of the poor of the world, but even of its own ability to produce food. It is not inconceivable to envisage a situation whereby the US becomes a net importer of food, assuming that is, that the developing world is in a position to export.

There is moreover, the very real danger that if climate change continues to destabilise weather patterns in increasingly unpredictable ways, that the US may very well be invading countries for access to food, not just for oil.

The US’s narrow focus on trying to protect its core business – oil – and the associated industries, has led to a form of myopia that has no historical precedent. And in part, this presents a real problem for anyone attempting to analyse possible outcomes, because by and large, we are used to the idea that whether correct or incorrect, government policies are based upon some kind of logic that has a number of possible outcomes that to some degree, can be calculated, outcomes based upon historical experience.

This is a frightening prospect, even for competing capitalist classes to contemplate, for it means that the most powerful nation on earth is led by an utterly irrational and desperate ruling elite, which driven by the prospect that the future of capitalism is questionable is liable to do almost anything in order to preserve its power and dominance, even to the point of risking global destruction.

4. A rejection of the commodification of life is best expressed in the battle over GM and the rejection on the part of Europe’s population of the commodification of DNA

The final battle between capital and labour will I believe, be fought over who owns the genetic blueprints for life, whether this be human reproduction or the production of food and other novel kinds of life. And all the indications are that the populations of Europe almost without exception, are rejecting genetic modification of plant and animal life, fearing quite rightly, that tampering with such fundamental and irreversible processes has unforeseen and uncontrollable outcomes.

The process is of course intimately connected to ownership of intellectual capital as information technology is the means whereby DNA is being mapped and altered. So fundamental is the issue of genetically modified life that it cuts across boundaries of class, gender, nationality and culture in Europe and elsewhere and is another indication of the split between the US and the EU.

The only support for GM in Europe comes from the UK government, where it seems that regardless of opposition from the population, Blair’s government is determined to do the bidding of their masters in Washington DC and force GM on an unwilling population. Whether they will succeed is dependent on whether or not a coherent alternative to the latest assault on the planet’s ability to support a diversity of life can be linked to the more general crisis of capital that confronts us.

5. A growing mass of global opinion opposed to the insane policies of the neo-imperialists

The combined issues I have identified above, are linked via what I believe are the altered consciousness of the populations of Europe who are having a profound effect on the policies of their political elites, and who are bound to respond to the demands of their citizens or face losing political power.

Moreover, the political elites are also faced with the fact that wherever they fail to deal with such fundamental issues, they are being outflanked by the far-right, something that frightens them even more than the rise of a ‘new left’. as the neo-fascists not only threaten to replace them, the population as a whole, rejects the neo-fascist agenda and for solid historical reasons. Again, I believe this is an entirely novel political environment that in part is made novel by the absence of a viable left alternative, possibly for the first time in the last 100 years.

It is within this political vacuum that there exists the possibility for a new alliance of progressive forces to emerge. An alliance built upon:

• Opposition to the apocalyptic ‘neo-imperialist’ agenda
• The threat to the biosphere (which also incorporates the GM issue)
• ‘Fair Trade’ and a just deal for the poor of the planet based on an alliance between the progessive populations of Europe and those of the poor world
• An alternative economic model for sustainable growth (linked to the coming energy crisis)
• An emerging post-nation state consciousness that combines socialist ideas that are embedded in the public sector supply of social services, redistribution of wealth and the commensurate devolution of the central state 

These are the five main elements of a new alliance of progressive forces that I believe can appeal to a wide cross-section of social forces. And whilst I don’t believe that socialism will be the immediate outcome of such an alliance, I do believe that fundamental structural changes can be made that will be difficult if not impossible to reverse and which will in turn, form the basis for a transition to some new kind of socialism that will be essentially global in scope.

The alternative is just too horrific to contemplate and I think it is the idea of the alternative of a world dominated by USUK imperialism which will impel vast numbers of people to consider some kind of programme based upon the one I’ve outlined above as the only one to guarantee a viable and sustainable future for the planet.