This is mostly about the WWI era, and WWI was indeed a racket, fought for elites at the expense of everyone else.
I'm curious if he would write the same article after WWII.
I'm curious if he would write the same article after WWII.
When I was growing up in the 90s this was pretty fringe thinking. Now, though, 20-30 years later, multiple combat tours & a military career under my belt I realize we should have been listening to Butler all along. It’s painfully, agonizingly naive to think that WW2 of all things would somehow be a counterweight to Butler’s point.
The world we live in, our perceptions of it, the language we use to describe it, is deeply anchored in the technocapitalist empire America was empowered to establish in the unsettled world order left in the aftermath of WW2.
So, what are the alternatives to American hegemony? I don't know. What are the alternatives to capitalism? What are the alternatives to accumulating and hoarding wealth? Not doing that, I guess, right? So, the only answer I'm equipped to provide is that the alternative to American hegemony would be not American hegemony.
(Note: I could definitely articulate a market socialist position here that might reflect my political views but that could and would be picked apart in an Internet forum. The point is that we are all so institutionalized to this hegemonic world that any alternative will be seen as inferior. It will take revolution.)
There'd be a big war and after that who knows what the world would look like. The fact you still see the world as necessarily dipole, a tension between great powers vying for control over "the little people" kind of makes my point.
There is no difference between an American and a Chinese hegemony. The problem isn't that the hegemony we have is American. The problem is hegemony.