One of my undergraduate professors once told me in a decisive tone, “Freud and Lenin were the first distinctive 20th century men.” I was very impressed with the comment. Although to this day, I have no idea what he meant by that. But it caught my attention.
John Kenneth Galbraith commented on the famous book in his sardonic manner:
[Lenin’s book] set forth his theory of imperialism - Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. It was published only after his return to Russia in 1917.The same professor turned me on (as we said in those days) to Galbraith, who I still quote all the time. Like here. I think Galbraith was a bit too dismissive of that particular book. But he’s right that it was part of a broader trend of anti-imperialist thinking.
Not even a committed disciple could think it an impressive document, although many have risen to the challenge. It is assertive and contentious, and, though short, it is very tedious. Nor is it original. As Lenin fully concedes, it draws heavily on the. ideas of J. A. Hobson, the most innovative of English socialists and social reformers. (1)
Lenin’s book also draws heavily on the work of the Austrian Marxist Rudolf Hilferding, Das Finanzkapital (1910). (Hilferding later served as the Social Democratic Minister of Finance in Germany in 1923 and 1928-29.) A key idea of this mode of analysis was that the need for overseas markets and investments drove major capitalist powers to compete with each other for control of colonies. In light of events like the Berlin Conference of 1884-5 (2), the Spanish American War which extended to the US colonial war known the Philippine–American War of 1899-1902, the Western intervention (including the US) in the Boxer Rebellion in China (1900), the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-6, and the Moroccan Crisis of 1905-6 (3) – the idea that monopoly capitalism had an internal dynamic that tended to generate wars was hardly an esoteric assumption.
Currently, the two major mainstream views on foreign policy in the US foreign policy establishment are “liberal internationalism” and “realism,” with considerable variations within each category. There are still “neoconservative” advocates who are basically nationalist warmongers. Further to the right on the spectrum, we have “paleoconservatives” who sometimes call for foreign-policy restraint in ways that team them up with more cautious realists: But when we look more closely at the “paleo” perspective, it tends to be even more nationalist and militarist than the neocons. (And they tend to be troglodytes on domestic issues.)
There are plenty of critics of present-day imperialism, though “imperialism” is no longer considered a respectable thing in the mainstream, very different than previous centuries. So condemnation of imperialism are routinely made against the Other Side in a particular conflict. That is, for the US Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is imperialism, but US threats of armed action to seize territory from Denmark and Panama are simply national security necessity.
And, oh, by the way: wealthy oligarchs and corporations do have major influence on foreign policy, whatever label we may put on it.
Michael McFaul, a devoted member of the US foreign policy elite, recently wrote a column titled, “Surviving as a Liberal Internationalist in the Era of Trump’s Illiberal Nationalism.” He describes himself as “internationalist, multilateralist, and liberal” in this foreign policy outlook. (2)
He gives this description of his broad view:
To advance American security and economic interests most effectively, the United States must be engaged in the world, not withdrawn from it. Isolationism may have worked fine in earlier centuries of our history. (On that history, read Charles Kupchan’s Isolationism). But it certainly failed us in the 1930s and will fail us again today. (On that 1930s history, read the terrific book by Robert Kagan called The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941). If Putin prevails in Ukraine, the threat to American allies in Europe will grow. We will have to send more American soldiers to help defend our NATO allies. And if we don’t—or if we withdraw from NATO altogether, as some isolationists now recommend—the probability of a larger war in Europe will increase. If Putin attacks Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, or Poland, the United States will eventually have to get involved, just like it happened during World War II. [my emphasis]There is a saying about neocons that for them, it’s always 1938 and Neville Chamberlain is always on the verge of giving Czechoslovakia to Hitler and making world war inevitable. But even more genuinely liberal theorists like McFaul often can’t resist indulging in a bit of the same.
The “realists” are not so inclined to rely on broad historical analogies. So they tend to look at the great power competition in Europe as being currently aligned into a Russian-led block and the US-led NATO. If Russia is showing any inclination to wage wars of aggression against and Poland or some combination thereof, they seem to be keeping it very discreet. Also, despite the public hype in the West, Putin’s government has never explicitly stated that it intends to seize all of Ukraine and/or absorb it into Russia. The Western hawks on the Russia-Ukraine War have lately been talking about what a tremendous burden the war has been on Russia. This is typically used a selling point for the idea that the West should back Ukraine in the war forever because it’s doing so much harm to Russia.
NATO exists, and even the most pacifist government imaginable is not going to try to have NATO unilaterally dissolved without a massive new set of security agreements and assurances from Russia. The realists in the 1990s warned about the eastward expansion of NATO because Russia would see it as potentially threatened. And Russia did public oppose such expansions. When NATO added Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the US and other members effective took that as a “freebee” on the idea that Russia was not likely to try to seize of them, and so other NATO members didn’t need to make military deployments and fortifications on the assumption that those countries would become a front line in a shooting war with Russia.
By contrast, during the Cold War NATO forces were stationed in West Germany with the expectation that NATO forces would be able to slow Soviet Red Army’s advance west through the “Fulda Gap,” with the US then initiating tactical nuclear war against the Soviets to stope their advance. That’s a huge reason why the US would never agree to any “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons. Without the plan to initiate the use of tactical nukes in that scenario, the West would have had to build a much larger conventional military force in West Germany and also build massive fortifications and antitank trenches to make a conventional counterforce more credible. This would also have been tremendously expense, not to mention causing massive dislocation of people along the easter border of West Germany.
“Credibility” has been used more times than normal mortals could count as an excuse for risky, dumb, and even disastrous policies. But a military alliance that is meant to deter war actually does have to have a credible possibility of meeting its alliance defense obligations. And that means that in practice, NATO couldn’t just say, well, defending those Baltic countries would be a big hassle, so we’ll just declare we won’t do it.
But what if the United States decides to pull out of NATO? Trump, who apparently sees military alliances as something like Mob “protection” rackets, at least likes to make everyone think he has a paleocon streak that might lead him to do just that. “Under Trump’s leadership, an amalgam of right-wing populist style and paleoconservative policy triumphed as the GOP’s brand.” (3) If that happens, the Europeans would have to adjust. And that would mean building up their conventional capabilities, along with France and Britain providing the nuclear deterrent instead of the US.
Plus, Trump is talking trade war with the EU, too. (4) And literally threatening war against NATO ally Denmark.
In that situation, the European countries would have to come up with alternative security arrangement, something like the current NATO minus the Trumpified US. And they would have to build up their own military capabilities – with all the downsides that could come with it – and they would not be able to enter the Russia-Ukraine War as a belligerent party. Or even provide huge levels of assistance to Ukraine.
One of the current NATO members is also Canada. Are Britian, France, Germany, and Poland going to be ready to defend Canada against the US while they are building up a credible deterrent to any possible Russian aggression?
As annoying as they can sometimes be, the realist foreign-policy crowd makes the rest of us think about these kinds of pragmatic trade-offs.
This video about the original America First movement, which spawned the paleocon version of “isolationism,” provides a decent bit of background on that topic: (5)
Notes:
(1) Galbraith, John Kenneth (1977): The Age of Uncertainty, 147. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
(2) McFaul's World (Substack) 02/01/2025. <https://michaelmcfaul.substack.com/p/surviving-as-a-liberal-internationalist> (Accessed: 2025-03-02).
(3) Bloodworth, Jeffrey (2023): Trumpism’s Paleoconservative Roots and Dealignment. Journal of Right-Wing Studies 1:1, 185. <chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://escholarship.org/content/qt3hd329fh/qt3hd329fh_noSplash_0e7cf9cf6ca176628c5da8feba6c9868.pdf> (Accessed: 2025-03-02).
(4) Weise, Zia (2025): Bracing for trade war, EU vows ‘firm’ retaliation to potential Trump tariffs. Politico Europe 02/02/2025. <https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-vows-firm-response-potential-donald-trump-tariffs-eu-braces-trade-war/> (Accessed: 2025-03-02).
(5) Charles Lindbergh and the Ghosts of America First. The Bulwark YouTube channel 02/02/2025. <https://youtu.be/-6jzZ23Vcm8?si=y7UWWOR1_QliKkLY> (Accessed: 2025-03-02).
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