Thursday 10 September 2015

Andreas Bieler and Adam D.Morton on Spaces of New Imperialism and the Iraq War

Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton (2015) "Axis of Evil or Access to Diesel?: Spaces of New Imperialism and the Iraq War", Historical Materialism Vol.23/2: 94-130.

A related blog post

Abstract: This article examines how the Iraq War was a space in the ongoing geographical extension of global capitalism linked to usforeign policy. Was it simply the decision by a unitary, hegemonic actor in the inter-state system overriding concerns from other states? Was it an imperialist move to secure the ‘global oil spigot’? Alternatively, did the use of military force reflect the interests and emergence of a transnational state apparatus? We argue that the usimperium needs to be conceptualised as a specific form of state, within which and through which fractions of national and transnational capital operate. In so doing, the Iraq War is assessed as a moment in the extension of global capitalism in which the interests of a national fraction of capital within the usstate form was dominant, thereby placing processes of class struggle and their relation to wider spaces of imperialism at the centre of analysis.