American Power and Imperialism: Harvey's New Imperialism

Introduction: America's Global Perception

Over the past three decades, America has struggled with the way in which its use of power has been perceived by other nations. The previous administration's use of inflammatory rhetoric and its decision to move forward in Iraq without consulting allies and supporters in the United Nations cast America in the role of a power monger. This poor international attitude toward America can be better understood by reading David Harvey's The New Imperialism (2005), specifically Chapter 2, "How America's Power Grew." In Harvey's opening remarks defining imperialism and capitalism as elements of a working government and society, the American reader becomes more keenly aware that allegations of capitalistic imperialism carry genuine weight — however much we might dislike the label. It becomes easier to look back over not just the past eight years but the past two decades and to see how America arrived at a place where it has lost the alliance and admiration of much of the world. Harvey helps us understand how America came to occupy that place in time.

Harvey helps the reader put the term "imperialism" into context, describing its meaning as it pertains to the United States — or from an outside perspective — as "a distinctively political project on the part of actors whose power is based in command of a territory and a capacity to mobilize its human and natural resources towards political, economic, and military ends" (26). This description captures the position from which America operated when it set about effecting regime change in Iraq. Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, was the object of American leadership's obsession. What began as a seemingly noble cause was revealed as a more base abuse of power: an imperialistic regime change and nation-building effort stemming from a singular sense of retribution.

Harvey's Definition of Imperialism

When Harvey speaks of imperialism as a molecular process backed by capital — wherein the command of power through political, economic, and military resources can be manipulated as a political power bloc — the reader is able to draw a direct connection between the events of the past decade and what Harvey describes as the "struggle to assert its interests and achieve its goals in the world at large" (26). The fusion of capital and state power, in Harvey's framework, is not incidental but structural, and this insight gives the reader a new vocabulary for understanding decisions that once seemed purely ideological.

Harvey actually helps the reader follow the path of "how America's Power Grew," because we can take the concepts he teaches back before the events of 2001. In fact, his concepts can be applied to every administration — Republican or Democrat — back to the Vietnam conflict. This is the path that America blindly followed its leaders along, until, by 2008, the country stood as the epitome of conspicuous consumption and greed "operating in the space and time" (27), only temporarily impacted by the voting electorate. In other words, once leadership gains office, whatever was promised during campaigns gives way to special interest, as the concerns of the greater society become lost in the pursuit of self-interest.

Capitalism, Capital, and Molecular Power

We are perhaps for the first time in our nation's history attempting to understand our own path to the power that the rest of the world perceives us as having. As Harvey so succinctly demonstrates in his discussion of political maneuvering, America could not by any stretch of the imagination have accomplished its present position on the world stage without a supporting cast of global players (28). When those players built America up in pursuit of their own self-interests, their support quickly began deteriorating — disintegrating into a loss of control over their own political forces, economies, and even their ability to mobilize human resources as they once could.