On November 8, 1926, Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Communist thinker and activist, was arrested in Rome by Mussolini’s fascist police and convicted of violating certain “Exceptional Laws” that prohibited anti-government activities.  He was sentenced to twenty years in prison, but only lived ten – on April 27, 1937, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.  At his sentencing, the public prosecutor declared that “for twenty years, we must stop that brain from working,” but, ironically, those years in prison were, from a philosophical standpoint, his most productive – his Prison Notebooks developed theories that continue to be useful for explaining today’s world. [1]

            One of these is his concept of hegemony, which is especially useful for analyzing the current state of the world characterized by the unipolar dominance of the United States with president George W. Bush at the helm.  For Gramsci, hegemony is a form of dominance that involves both “force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent.” [2]   In other words, the ruling power achieves and maintains its hold not only through coercion (using institutions such as the military, the police, etc.) but also through “leadership,” by which it creates a culture that supports its actions within that society.  In this understanding of power, force alone is not enough to dominate a system – along with this bellicose arm, a more benign (if no less insidious) side rallies support and thus manufactures consent.  Interestingly enough, this concept can help to explain and understand the U.S.’s current foreign policy vision.  Following the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which demonstrated the country’s unmatched military power, the Bush administration is seeking this very consent, the Achilles heel of U.S. dominance.

The “strongest card”

            There is no denying that the U.S. military is by far the most powerful in the world.  Even scholars who argue that U.S. dominance is on the decline admit that the country “wields the most formidable military apparatus in the world,” and that its “edge over the rest of the world is considerably greater today” than only ten years ago.  The military is not only the U.S.’s “strongest card; in fact, it is the only card.” [3]   This was generally accepted as true even before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but now there is no room for debate.  The confidence of Bush’s military advisors, as they bicker over which “axis of evil” regime to take down next (will it be Iran, Syria or North Korea?  Or perhaps their backyard neighbor Cuba?), as well as the canonization of a new doctrine of preemptive war, demonstrate not only that this force exists, but that it is increasingly likely to be used.

            The U.S. armed forces are strong not only in the physical sense that they can take on any adversary, but also because of their intellectual backing.  The hawks are in control.  The Bush administration is heavily populated with neoconservative thinkers, many of whom are part of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a think tank dedicated to, among other things, maintaining and extending the Pax Americana by “increas[ing] defense spending significantly” in order to “modernize our armed forces” and prolong the U.S.’s military dominance. [4]   A short list of the organization’s members and their positions in the Bush government should provide an idea of how influential their ideas are: Vice President Dick Cheney; Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense; John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security; Eliot Cohen, Defense Policy Board; I. Lewis Libby, Chief of State for the Vice President; Dov Zakheim, Undersecretary of Defense and Chief Financial Officer for the Pentagon; Stephen Cambone, Head of the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation at the Department of Defense; and Elliott Abrams, Head of Middle East Policy at the National Security Council.  Those familiar with recent Latin American history might remember Abrams as an infamous Iran-contra operative in Nicaragua.  He joins the ranks of Bush’s bureaucracy along with other Iran-contra vets such as Otto Reich, Coordinator of “long-term policy initiatives” for the Western hemisphere in the National Security Council; Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State; John Negroponte, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; and John Poindexter, Director of the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness project.

            With so many high-level positions filled by neoconservative jingoists, it is natural that their influence on foreign policy will be felt.  A brief reading of Bush’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) in the context of PNAC recommendations is all it takes to recognize not only the rhetorical similarities but also the similarity of their obsessive worldviews.  In their influential publication, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” the PNAC argues that the U.S. must confront the “rogue states” of “North Korea, Iran, Iraq, or similar states;”  while Bush’s NSS reads, “we must be prepared to stop rogue states [such as Iraq and North Korea] and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends.”  The PNAC suggests that the U.S. “face up to the realities of multiple constabulary missions that will require a permanent allocation of U.S. forces;”  while the NSS recognizes that “it is time to reaffirm the essential role of American military strength,” dedicated to the armed forces’ “unparalleled strength and... forward presence.”  The PNAC says, “America must defend its homeland;” the NSS, “defending our Nation against its enemies is the first and fundamental commitment of the Federal Government.”  And the PNAC has the U.S. “secure and expand zones of democratic peace;” while the NSS declares that the U.S. will “actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets and free trade to every corner of the world.” [5]

In fact, one of the only notable differences between the PNAC recommendations and the NSS is that, while the former idealizes U.S. unilateral action, the latter actually recognizes the importance of effective multilateral cooperation (“There is little of lasting consequence that the United States can accomplish in the world without the sustained cooperation of its allies”).  Of course, this noble intention crumbled at the first sign of resistance, as the U.S. scorned both the U.N. and world opinion by invading Iraq without international support.

So it seems that one component of U.S. hegemony – force – is successfully intact, considering that the country benefits from not only an unrivaled military but also an effective ideological basis by which it can be used it to its fullest extent.  But, returning to Gramsci, true hegemony depends on more than just force.  What, then, is the status of U.S.’s “consent?”

Solidarity spurned

            The attacks of September 11 created an unprecedented level of international solidarity with a stunned U.S.  Washington’s long-time allies, such as the NATO countries in Europe, who within 35 hours of the attacks invoked Article V of the alliance’s charter (which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all members), were not the only ones to voice their support.  Across the world, in Asia, Africa and Latin America, governments and citizens manifested their sympathy and solidarity.  Even countries like Iran and Cuba jumped at the chance to condemn the attacks, despite being official members of the “axis of evil.”

            But the Bush administration quickly wasted this “sympathy capital.”  With an overwhelming combination of unilateral strong-arming, self-congratulatory rhetoric and ad hoc attacks on those countries it considered to be dragging their feet, Washington has demonstrated not only a refusal to compromise but also a determination to have its own way.  Unfortunately, this intransigence has had the foreseeable side effect of enervating international feelings of solidarity and, in fact, generating anti-U.S. sentiments across the world.  Even those countries that sided with the U.S. are losing faith.  As Immanuel Wallerstein writes, “surly acquiescence breeds increasing resentment...  These days, the United States is running through this credit even faster than it ran through its gold surplus in the 1960s.” [6]

            Gramsci would explain this phenomenon of decreasing support by pointing out that hegemony is not static, but fluid – it consistently faces challenges.  A hegemonic power will inevitably face a “crisis of authority... [that] creates situations which are dangerous in the short run...  The traditional ruling class [in this case, the United States in a world context]... with greater speed than is achieved by the subordinate classes, reabsorbs the control that was slipping from its grasp.  Perhaps it may make sacrifices, and expose itself to an uncertain future by demagogic promises; but it retains power, reinforces it for the time being, and uses it to crush its adversary and disperse his leading cadres.” [7]   This explanation is even more useful when the “dialectical unity of... force and consent” is taken into account. [8]   If hegemony is based on a dialectical relationship between force and consent, then when more force is used, the result is that more consent is both desired and needed.  So, following the U.S. invasion of Iraq (force), how is Washington responding to the “crisis of authority” it faces?  What is being done to manufacture the consent it needs to bolster its neoimperial, hegemonic fantasies?

“You are either with us or against us”

            On an international level, there are two “consent scenarios” to explore. [9]   The first is pre-Iraq consent – that is, support for the war in Iraq.  Everyone remembers how, back in November 2002, the U.S. tried to bully the U.N. into supporting outright military action against Saddam Hussein’s regime.  Its strong-arm tactics resulted in the Security Council’s unanimous approval of Resolution 1441, which did not, however, jump on Bush’s war bandwagon but rather called for more time for U.N. inspectors to look for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.  It was too much of a compromise for Bush’s taste.  Tired of waiting for the inspectors to finish their job and eager to set off on the warpath, the U.S. in March again tried to coerce the Security Council into voting for an immediate invasion.  The Council, made up of five permanent members (the U.S., Great Britain, France, Russia and China) and ten non-permanent members (currently Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Germany, Guinea, Pakistan, Syria, and two Latin American countries, Mexico and Chile), faced intense carrot-and-stick pressure from U.S. negotiators.  But in the end, these pushes failed, and the three main supporters of the resolution, the U.S., Britain and Spain (joined by Bulgaria), backed down in the face of heavy resistance from the other eleven members.

            Ultimately, however, Bush was set on invading, and so the U.S. went about forming a “coalition of the willing” to manufacture consent despite the lack of a U.N. resolution in its favor.  Flouting international law and convention, Washington first made the unilateral decision for war and only then, after the fact, tried to garner support.  And support was there, in a way.  But despite the fact that the Coalition boasted the support of 45 nations around the world (more than during the first Gulf War), the reality was much more problematic than the numbers made it seem.  The list included, for example, six countries that, ironically, have no military forces (Palau, Costa Rica, Iceland, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and the Solomon Islands), and 18 countries that, paradoxically (considering the mission’s given name: “Operation Iraqi Freedom”), have been condemned by the U.S. State Department as having “poor or extremely poor” overall human rights situations (including various instances of torture and extrajudicial killings).  Thus, Johann Fritz, the Director of the International Press Institute, described the group as “more a… ‘coalition of the sinning’ rather than of ‘the willing.’” [10]   It would seem, then, that such a rag-tag coalition does not provide sufficient consent to justify the invasion.

            Which leads to the second “consent scenario,” that of post-Iraq consent.  As described earlier, the U.S. is facing a “crisis of authority,” consisting of not only a fundamental lack of support for but also increasing hostility towards its policies.  Washington’s task in the post-Saddam world is to rebuild its pre-war status and manufacture the consent necessary to continue its neoimperial expansion, be it political-military (through future invasions of “axis of evil” countries) or economic-cultural (through free trade initiatives and the extension of U.S. capital).  But the question remains, for both scenarios: How to accomplish this?

Of carrots and sticks

            Throughout the twentieth century, the U.S. has used both carrots and sticks to get what it wants.  Those familiar with the context of Latin American politics might, however, remember the stick end more clearly.  In Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Argentina, Brazil and Chile, to list a few examples, Washington sponsored, both economically and militarily, brutal dictatorships and their counterinsurgency wars against popular resistance movements.  It seems, however, that in recent years direct support for such regimes has become harder to justify to the international community and the domestic public.  A new strategy is emerging, one that has taken on a more carrot-like form that relies less on direct intervention – which does not mean, however, that it is any less coercive.  Here are three recent scenarios from Latin America.

            Scenario One: Bolivia and Nicaragua.  In June 2002, Washington was faced with the potential election of socialist presidential candidate Evo Morales, leader of the Movement towards Socialism party and outspoken critic of the United States.  Morales had placed second in the first round election in which no one candidate won a majority, meaning that he was to face right-wing ex-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada in a run-off election.  Because Morales represented a threat to its interests, the U.S. decided to intervene in the election, and had its ambassador, Manuel Rocha, issue a statement declaring that “if they [the Bolivian electorate] vote[s] for those who want Bolivia to return to exporting cocaine, that will seriously jeopardize any future aid to Bolivia from the United States.”  Ironically, this intervention only succeeded in boosting Morales’ popularity.  Although in the end he lost the election, Morales described Rocha as his “best campaign chief.” [11]

Bolivia is only the most recent example of such intervention.  The previous year, the U.S. intervened in Nicaragua’s presidential elections against Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega.  Duncan Campbell of The Guardian reports that a U.S. State Department official “urge[d] the conservative parties running against Mr. Ortega to bury their differences to defeat him.”  Ortega lost the election, but he most likely would have lost anyway.

            This sort of manipulation of a sovereign country’s democratic processes reveals the strong interests that the U.S. had in making sure that both of these left-wing candidates lost.  In terms of both national security (which is how Washington views the drug problem) and U.S. capital, there was a strong interest to stick its neck in.  In this way, Washington hoped to manufacture consent (albeit somewhat fictitious) by establishing pro-U.S. regimes which would supposedly support its initiatives.

            Scenario Two: Venezuela.  On April 11, 2002, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela´s democratically-elected populist president, was deposed by a coup led by right-wing business interests.  Nearly all of Latin America united in condemning the takeover as anti-democratic.  But Washington praised the instigators and immediately accepted their illegitimate government, while blaming Chávez for his own downfall.  And the Bush administration was right there to offer support – officials concede that, hours after the coup took place, Otto Reich telephoned the newly-installed president Pedro Carmona with policy suggestions. [12]

            Many analysts suspect that Washington was involved in planning the coup, [13] which would imply an insidious, much more direct intervention than those taken in Bolivia and Nicaragua that harkens back to General Pinochet’s U.S.-sponsored ouster of Salvador Allende in Chile thirty years earlier.  But even if the U.S. was not behind the coup, the official response hypocritically reneged on Washington's supposed commitment to democratic growth in the region and around the world.  The decision was clearly designed to promote U.S. interests in the region, once again manufacturing “consent” at the expense of Venezuelan democracy.  In any case, it seems clear that “when politics in its backyard are deemed a threat to Pax Americana, the U.S. quickly resorts of the imperatives of empire, treating the region's nations not as partners but as pawns.” [14]

            Scenario Three: Chile and Mexico.  Chile and Mexico are, as described above, currently members of the U.N. Security Council.  All of the (perhaps unfortunate) countries that made up this elite body, of course, were to face concentrated pressure during Bush's run to coalesce support around his invasion of Iraq.  In the case of its continental neighbors, Washington’s strategy revolved around the fact that it had policy agreements in the works with both countries.  Chile was in the process of working out a bilateral free trade deal with the U.S., while Mexican president Vicente Fox was looking to fulfill his campaign promise and sign an immigration accord.  The strategy was a modification of the symbiotic “I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine” arrangement, changed from an agreement made on equal footing into an asymmetrical power relation: “You vote for us in the Security Council, and we’ll consider keeping the political promises we’ve made to you.”  Laura Carlsen of the Interhemispheric Resource Center writes that “although the U.S. envoys insisted that no pressure was exerted, former Chilean ambassador Gabriel Valdés complained that the pressure was palpable... ‘Talking with the United States is like talking to an elephant.  It’s very large, heavy and generally bad-mannered.’” [15]

            An interesting digression can be made here.  The fact is that Gabriel Valdés is now the former Chilean ambassador to the U.N. precisely because of Washington’s meddling.  Chile walked a thin line between a rock and a hard place – on the one hand, public opinion was wholeheartedly against the war in Iraq, and on the other, the free trade pact made it desirable to appease the U.S.  So Valdés was charged by president Ricardo Lagos with somehow opposing the war but doing so in such a way as to not anger the continental hegemon.  Unfortunately for Valdés, he was too blunt and determined in his speeches (both the U.S. and Spanish ambassadors to the U.N. complained about his aggressive rhetoric) and, in a somewhat prescient move, declared that he would rather resign than vote to support the U.S.’s war resolution.  This caused Washington to stall on the treaty – U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick was quoted as saying that “people are disappointed... We hoped for their support in a time that we felt it was very important.” [16]   Ironically, it also nearly gave Valdés his wish – on May 7, Lagos replaced him with Herald Muñoz, who, as a former classmate of Bush’s National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, seemed a less offensive and more acceptable presence. [17]   Notably, just after his replacement, Washington once again shifted positions on the treaty, which then proceeded at full speed and was signed exactly a month later.

            The Mexican situation is different only in that there has been less appeasement towards Washington and, consequently, less progress on the agreement.  The air of friendship and cooperation and the apparent closeness of the two presidents present at the beginning of Bush’s term changed substantially after September 11.  But Mexico’s anti-war vote in the Security Council will do nothing to help Fox’s agenda, and it is now highly unlikely that an agreement will be reached in the near future. [18]

            Washington’s treatment of those countries reluctant to support its decisions is reminiscent of a trainer of circus animals, who distributes rewards to the complacent and metes out punishments to the intractable.  Thus, it is clear that the Bush administration, while in general disregarding world opinions, recognizes the need for a certain amount of “Gramscian” consent in order to solidify its power.

Trading trade... for consent

            These scenarios taken from Latin America are only several of many examples that reveal the inner machinations of Bush’s punitive game of payback. [19]   It seems that the preferred tool for winning this consent – the carrot, as it were – is free trade.  Rewarding and punishing countries for their actions with economic policy is nothing new in the U.S.’s book (one need only look at the sanctions maintained against Cuba and Iraq to get an idea of the role economics plays).  The difference is that now this policy forms part of the Bush administration’s official canon.  It has been endorsed and – quite noticeably – entered into the book of empire.

            On May 8, Robert Zoellick gave a speech in which he stated that countries seeking free trade agreements with the U.S. would have to show themselves worthy in more than the economic arena.  Thirteen different criteria have been selected to guide Washington’s decision-making process, although there are apparently “no formal rules” regulating these decisions.  It remains clear, however, that they will be based on not only trade-related issues such as the prospective trading partner’s support of the U.S.’s agenda in the World Trade Organization, but also on purely political ones.  As Zoellick affirmed, “these countries must cooperate with the United States on its foreign policy and national security goals.”  One recent example outside of Latin America is the decision to withhold the offer of a free trade agreement to New Zealand, which has evidently refused to let U.S. ships powered by nuclear generators into its sovereign waters. [20]   Another is the bilateral deal speedily signed with Singapore, contrasted by the fact that at exactly the same time that Washington was pigeonholing the Chilean trade initiative. [21]

Latin America has long faced the U.S.’s free trade challenge, and is currently confronting the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, Washington’s plan to unite the hemisphere under one neoliberal roof and create the largest common market in the world for its products.  As the Chilean example – as well as NAFTA, the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement and the Puebla-Panama Plan – demonstrates, free trade is an outstanding issue in the region.  Despite its many critics in civil society, regional governments generally remain committed to the success of these agreements.  Notable exceptions are Brazil, Venezuela and, of course, Cuba, which, incidentally, were together labeled by the House International Relations Committee Chair, Republican Henry Hyde, as a new hemispheric – and thus much more dangerous – “axis of evil.” [22]   The fact that these countries have been demonized further demonstrates Washington’s investment in economics and trade as effective tools.  Those who threaten the efficacy of these tools, therefore, are considered threats.

            For Gramsci, too, hegemony is at least partly an economic phenomenon.  Hegemony, he writes, is “economic, must necessarily be based on the decisive function exercised by the leading group in the decisive nucleus of economic activity.”  He goes on to argue that “undoubtedly the fact of hegemony presupposes that account be taken of the interests and the tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is to be exercised, and that a certain compromise equilibrium should be formed – in other words, that the leading group should make sacrifices of an economic-corporate kind.  But there is also no doubt that such sacrifices and such a compromise cannot touch the essential.” [23]   As per Gramsci’s analysis, the U.S. has isolated an effective issue with which to command attention, respect and acquiescence.  Free trade fits this categorization perfectly, because at least theoretically, it eliminates the “unfair” advantages accrued by protectionism (in other words, the very “sacrifices of an economic-corporate kind” to which Gramsci refers) and puts countries on an level playing field.  But even though acquiring hegemonic consent – buying loyalty – requires the imperial schemer to forfeit some of its own interests, the overall advantage will never be given up voluntarily.  One has only to look at U.S. agricultural subsidies, which fly in the face of the NAFTA agreements and condemn Mexican farmers to poverty, to see that this is true.

            So how is U.S. hegemony to be confronted?  Clearly there is much to be done, and no single path to be followed.  But perhaps one way to start is by refusing to grant one’s consent.  Without this critical component, hegemony does not function – Bush can invade Iraq more or less alone, but how many more Iraqs will he be able to face?  Individual countries (and of course individual people) that take individual action and speak out against hegemony – such as Chile and its Gabriel Valdés, for example, but just as notable are the millions of protesters around the world who demonstrated against the war – make valuable contributions to the anti-imperial movement as a whole.  Gramsci uses the metaphor of a symphony to describe this phenomenon: “An orchestra in rehearsal, each instrument playing for itself, gives the impression of a dreadful cacophony.  And yet these rehearsals are necessary for the orchestra to live as a ‘single instrument.’” [24]   Perhaps if governments in Latin America and around the world stop letting themselves be talked into following Washington’s warpath, and stop falling for the free trade bait, the monolith will begin to crumble.

Daniel Nemser

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