Divide And Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy In An
Age Of Crisis
by Dan Glazebrook
(Liberation Media, £8.50)

DAN Glazebrook’s first book provides a compelling and vital introduction to the ideas and methods of modern imperialism.

He presents a changing world order in which western economic dominance is finally coming to an end, particularly as a result of China’s dramatic rise.

Hastened by the current economic crisis, avenues for profitable investment are disappearing by the day and industry is suffering from a chronic crisis of overproduction.

The financial bubble — which kept Western economies afloat from the 1970s until the recent crash — has well and truly burst. The domination of Third World economies is being made increasingly difficult due to the entry in to the global market of China, India, Brazil and other countries willing to do business with Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Caribbean on the basis of equality, friendship and mutual benefit.

The global political and economic dominance of western Europe and its US protege is facing the most serious threat of its half-millennium existence. But it isn’t going down without a fight — literally — and Glazebrook describes the key ways in which imperialism is facing this existential challenge.

It is doing so through privatisation, austerity and the intensified application of neoliberal economics within the heartlands of imperialism, resulting in a dramatic transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

And Glazebrook outlines how it is applying military force, directly or by proxy, in order to capture as large a share as possible of the world’s diminishing resources in order to create and conquer new markets through the destruction and rebuilding of infrastructure and the elimination of competition.

The use of every type of destabilisation, demonisation, terrorism, sanctions, manufactured dissent, bullying and warfare is being employed to hold back the rise of the global south by destroying smaller players such as Libya, Iraq and Syria and encircling the big guys, China and Russia.

Divide And Ruin describes the manifold ways in which Western governments and media manipulate popular opinion towards supporting those strategies. Digging into the details of the Libya and Syria wars, Glazebrook shows how the “responsibility to protect” narrative — “the 21st-century white man’s burden” — has been used to dupe liberals and indeed many on the left.

Sophisticated lies, reminiscent of the Kuwaiti baby incubator hoax of 1990, are repeated ad nauseam until they gain the force of fact. With these “facts” established, people are made to feel that “something must be done,” at which point the case can easily be made for war, be it the cheap version — proxy war waged by religious sectarians using weapons provided by the west’s regional allies — or full-scale Nato bombing campaigns.

With the rise of private security companies such as Blackwater, along with the many innovations in military technology in recent decades, the US and its allies are no longer even particularly concerned with the level of mess they leave behind. They are perfectly happy for Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan to suffer in a state of total chaos. That’s “better” than them being resistant states that refuse to go along with an imperialist world order.

In the old days, a “strongman” state of the Mobutu or Pinochet variety was needed to secure resources and markets. These days, they can be secured by highly paid security contractors, the funding of which becomes an important avenue of investment.

In detailing these Western machinations, the book sets a clear challenge for the progressive movement of steadfastly opposing imperialist strategy in all its forms, whether it be through bombs, proxy wars, destabilisation, sanctions, incitement of divisions, media lies, privatisation or austerity.