The Endgame of Globalization

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by Neil Smith

Routledge

Due/Published January 2005, 176 pages, cloth

ISBN 0415950120

Many currently argue that while America may indeed be the center of an empire, the empire is one of ideas, not a territorial empire. But as Neil Smith shows in this sharply argued account of what America's recent overseas adventures are really about, we are not in an entirely new stage of history where territorial control is only incidental to power. America does in fact draw much of its power from its export of ideas and its global economic strength. However, it also needs to assert control over geography because too much of the world refuses to follow in lockstep. Smith, the author of the award winning American Empire, blends detailed accounts of contemporary world affairs with an extended discussion of the territorial imperatives that drove American foreign policy throughout its history. As events in Iraq show, the American empire project is in its "endgame" stage, for never before has America's geopolitical vision been so all-encompassing, so global. But given the problems that territorial empires have always faced, is it an endgame that the U.S. can win?

Contents

1. Geographies of Globalization 2. Globalism Before Globalization 3. A Global Monroe Doctrine: The first moment of US ambition 4. Globalism Redux: Bretton Woods, the UN and the second moment of US ambition 5. The Endgame of Globalization 6. After Iraq