Tony Smith — Is Liberal Internationalism Dead?

History lesson. Woodrow Wilson versus Donald Trump.

Does the global progress depend on American leadership?

Project Syndicate
Is Liberal Internationalism Dead?
Tony Smith, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Tufts University

See also

But if the revolutionaries take their war against the state too far, they face a different problem, because members of the old establishment are the only people who know enough about specific government programs to get anything done. Ultimately, the revolutionaries must try to strike a balance between betraying their supporters’ radical wishes and escalating their conflict with the state to the point that no other policy goals can be achieved.

This is the crux of the problem. The modern bureaucratic state arose in Prussia at the time that Germany was being unified into a nation the late 19th century.

The problem with the bureaucratic state is that it is highly effective and efficient in comparison with other types of state organization, but it is also the basis for a shadow government that is the actual government that persists across changes in political power.

The first question is whether Trump-Bannon can "deconstruct the administrative state." The second what will replace it and how effective and efficient it will be in comparison.

Trump’s Revolutionary Dilemma
Harold James | Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University and a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation

Paul Robinson — Book Review: Should we fear Russia?

Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, is one of the more even-handed commentators on Russian foreign policy. On the one hand, he isn’t much of a fan of the ‘Putin regime’, and knows how to speak the sort of critical language required to confirm one’s reputation as a respectable thinker in the West. On the other hand, he avoids most of the hyperbole generally associated with commentary on things Russian, and isn’t one of those ‘non-systemic opposition’ types who gives the impression that Russia’s interests are best served by abject surrender to the United States. In light of the West’s current rampant Russophobia, his short (120-page) book Should We Fear Russia? is very timely….

Irrussianality
Book Review: Should we fear Russia?
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

Zero Hedge — Merkel Slams US Hegemony? "America Can't Solve All The World's Problems Anymore"

America's worst nightmare. Russia and Germany heart each other.

Zero Hedge
Merkel Slams US Hegemony? "America Can't Solve All The World's Problems Anymore"
Posted by Tyler Durden

William I. Robinson — Global capitalism and 21st century fascism

The crisis of global capitalism is unprecedented, given its magnitude, its global reach, the extent of ecological degradation and social deterioration, and the scale of the means of violence. We truly face a crisis of humanity. The stakes have never been higher; our very survival is at risk. We have entered into a period of great upheavals and uncertainties, of momentous changes, fraught with dangers - if also opportunities. 

I want to discuss here the crisis of global capitalism and the notion of distinct political responses to the crisis, with a focus on the far-right response and the danger of what I refer to as 21st century fascism, particularly in the United States.

Facing the crisis calls for an analysis of the capitalist system, which has undergone restructuring and transformation in recent decades. The current moment involves a qualitatively new transnational or global phase of world capitalism that can be traced back to the 1970s, and is characterised by the rise of truly transnational capital and a transnational capitalist class, or TCC. Transnational capital has been able to break free of nation-state constraints to accumulation beyond the previous epoch, and with it, to shift the correlation of class and social forces worldwide sharply in its favour - and to undercut the strength of popular and working class movements around the world, in the wake of the global rebellions of the 1960s and the 1970s.

Emergent transnational capital underwent a major expansion in the 1980s and 1990s, involving hyper-accumulation through new technologies such as computers and informatics, through neo-liberal policies, and through new modalities of mobilising and exploiting the global labour force - including a massive new round of primitive accumulation, uprooting, and displacing hundreds of millions of people - especially in the third world countryside, who have become internal and transnational migrants.

We face a system that is now much more integrated, and dominant groups that have accumulated an extraordinary amount of transnational power and control over global resources and institutions....

Al Jazeera
Global capitalism and 21st century fascism
William I. Robinson | Professor of Sociology and Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara
(h/t Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism)

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The American Empire turning out to be the Evil Empire? The evidence is in.