Page 90 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

76 Politics in a Small World

the use of hegemonic ideals of human rights with superior military force

to make resistance extremely difficult. On this account, the events of 9/11
provided a perfect pretext for imperialist expansion masked as military
humanitarianism.
A fundamental problem with this kind of account is that, as an expla-
nation, it relies on an unexamined functionalism. Harvey ’ s account
explains the facts of what happened in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in
terms of a circular logic: because capitalist accumulation requires impe-
rialism, humanitarian interventions have now become something of a
norm in global governance, if not in international law. His account
explains historical events by recourse to the necessity of the capitalist
system: what the system needed to happen, did happen. Functionalism is
a recurrent problem for Marxist explanations. As Giddens puts it, because
Marxism is a theory of social reproduction, it is rather prone to the for-
mulation, “ Capitalism has its own ‘ needs, ’ which the system functions to
fulfi l ” (Giddens, 1979 : 112).
By what mechanisms does capitalist imperialism achieve what it needs?
In fact, it can only do so through the situated and contingent judgments
and actions of actors who must decide how to proceed based on their
necessarily limited perceptions and assumptions. Thus, at odds with the
fundamental functionalism of his theory of capitalism ’ s need for imperi-
alism, Harvey has to admit that, although US elites may be motivated by
calculations concerning their long - term geo - political interests, they do
not know how to achieve them. In fact, US activities in the Middle East
do not appear rational at all if the aim is to achieve control over oil

reserves. The principal difficulty here is US support for Israel. It has long
been underpinned by assumptions concerning Israel ’ s strategic impor-
tance, as well as its moral superiority, in the Middle East, but rationally
it would make much more sense for the US to put pressure on Israel to
come to terms with at least some Palestinian demands for territory and

security in order to extend hegemonic influence in the region (Lieven,
2004 ). Indeed, Harvey himself notes that it is very far from obvious that
the Iraq war will be successful in giving US elites control of Middle East
oil reserves; such an outcome depends not only on Iraq becoming a
prosperous, democratic, and capitalist state under US infl uence, but also
on an Israel - Palestine settlement that would be acceptable to surrounding
Arab states, and a dampening of nationalist sentiments in the region that
might otherwise put constraints on the circulation and accumulation of
capital (Harvey, 2003 : 199 – 207). In this respect, Harvey agrees with
Michael Mann that the US is an incoherent empire, lacking the organized
political will and military strength to carry through any systematic