Kees van der Pijl: The United States and Europe—Bolstering the Infrastructure of Atlantic Unity in a Time of Crisis, Overcoming Rivalry

In these notes[1] I will address the issue of how the United States and the European Union are responding to what is now increasingly recognised as an existential crisis of Western hegemony and liberal capitalism. As George Soros wrote on 23 October 2014 in The Guardian newspaper, the West must keep up its pressure in Ukraine, because if not, the system that has been built up over decades and which includes NATO and the EU, may begin to unravel and as it does, eastern Europe may again come under the influence of a resurgent Russia. More

 

Kees van der Pijl: The Financial Crisis and the War for Global Governance

This paper argues that in the transition from corporate liberalism to neoliberalism, the projection of global governance by the West replaces the previous recognition of bloc formation of non-Western states. The military build-up and counterrevolutionary interventions  under Reagan, and the revolt of the capital markets against Keynesianism coupled with unregulated finance, were the relays in this projection. In the same period the Israeli Far Right and their supporters in the United States re-baptised national liberation as terrorism. This made it possible to continue with record defence outlays and arms exports to Middle East and Asian clients. In the early nineties the US military-industrial complex  More

Kees van der Pijl: 1984 All Over Again. The Snowden NSA Revelations in Perspective

In the discussion concerning the Snowden NSA revelations many have referred to Orwell’s 1984. This paper highlights that Orwell identified two components–total surveillance and permanent war. The paper then looks at the actual year 1984 and argues that in that year was significant after all because both elements of today’s War on Terror (surveillance and war) were being prepared. One was the Washington conference on the War on Terror, the third in a series initiated from Israel; the other, the preparation of a Continuity of Government (COG) programme by the Reagan administration, more