Fourth, real wages slipped downward, with few, small and short-lived exceptions. Together with rising labour productivity, this trend culminated in 2004 with company profits amounting to nearly 10 per cent of US national income: a multi-decade high. In contrast, workers responded to falling real wages by sending more family members to work for more hours and taking on debt without historical parallel.

Fifth, massive globe-straddling corporations consolidated media empires and connections, enabling the prevention or control of public understanding of and debate on expanding wealth and power. With almost religiously fundamentalist fervour, a media blizzard celebrated a magical ‘new economy’ of perpetual growth in which efficiency gains would pour endlessly from deregulated private enterprise and markets. Left-wing oppositional movements were demonised as anachronistic, wrong-headed and sometimes part of an evil empire. The collapse of the Soviet Union and other similar economic systems ‘proved’ the non-viability of alternatives to private capitalism.

Over much of the last 25 years, US stock markets reflected these conditions by enabling a hysterical, historically unprecedented accumulation, concentration and centralisation of wealth. The state accelerated the eradication of costly social programmes and mass public services forced on private capitalism by the Great Depression and the Soviet alternative. Public services were denounced as costly wastes of resources that should be diverted to profitable use. The state enlarged its already pre-eminent global military: the US defence budget for 2004-05 was worth $500 billion (four years previously it had been worth $300 billion). And today the US presents itself globally as absolutely supreme, a totally invincible economic and military juggernaut.

Yet myriad internal contradictions and costs of global empire reveal weaknesses that are boiling just below the surface and increasingly erupting to the shock and awe of a watchful world. The stock market bubble burst early in 2000. The promise of endlessly expanding prosperity collapsed. Unemployment and hardship rose as recession returned. Deepening social wounds, opened by rising inequalities of wealth, income and power among and within nations, burst out. European social democracy became more assertive in its competition with US-UK neo-liberalism. Celebrations of capitalist globalisation became increasingly unsure of themselves and decreasingly effective with world audiences. A crowd of diverse critics struggled successfully to obtain public hearing, contesting the ‘historical inevitability’ of global prosperity and charging the new global market instead with mass immiseration. As chief booster and leader of that model of capitalist globalisation, the US became the focus of critique, rage and resistance.

Instead of multilateral economic agreements, regional blocs increasingly reflect mounting conflict. Political movements and national governments, fearing the fallout from a faltering globalisation project, explore new alliances and strategies. US supremacy faces diverse economic and political challenges. Limits on the export of economic problems to the developing world are emerging. China, India, Brazil and the EU, among others, are rivals for local hegemony.

Domestically, equally serious problems loom. As real wages fall, and people respond by working and borrowing ever more, insupportable emotional and physical burdens begin to overwhelm family life. Countless national surveys demonstrate epidemics of divorce, family violence, parental-child alienation, drug-dependency and personal bankruptcy in the US. These difficulties were tolerated so long as Americans believed that the celebrated prosperity of the new economy would trickle down: they hoped for salvation from inflation in homes, stocks, bonds, mutual funds and pension accounts. Those hopes now threaten not to materialise. Delusions of a speculative reprieve slid with the stock market as the new economy melted away. Only the current, and unsustainable, housing price bubble has postponed serious middle-class crisis in the US.

Amid deteriorating foreign and domestic circumstances, the Bush presidency faced two major problems from the beginning of the administration. First, how could it restart and reinvigorate US-led capitalism given the mounting resistance abroad and criticism at home? Second, how could it manage the growing economic problems of the mass of workers frightened and angered by economic and personal crises? The attacks of 9/11 offered a timely opportunity to ‘solve’ these problems.

The regime turned disaster to advantage. It deflected blame for intelligence and military failures by a surge in militarism focused on ‘foreign enemies’ and by the construction of a massive ‘homeland security’ apparatus. Militarised US hegemony emerged as the plan for revitalising global capitalism. Thus Bush denounces capitalist globalisation’s previous alliances with ‘old Europe’: only militarised unilateralism can crush the evil forces (‘terrorism’) that threaten the US, liberty and wealth. Wars on Afghanistan and Iraq were ‘punishments’ for evil deeds and a warning to all other evil-doers. In an important mutation, the new order features more and bolder unilateral invasions, controlled puppet regimes and sustained occupations. Hastily purchased UN endorsements or caricature ‘coalitions of the willing’ provide the fig leaf. Consequently, we see emerging blocs of almost overtly clashing interests rising throughout an increasingly troubled world.

Afghanistan and Iraq represent more than weapons of mass distraction from the failure to prevent 9/11: they are means to deflect mounting dissatisfaction at home by dramatically redefining the ‘enemies’ of hopes and dreams of prosperity (or at least of escape from indebtedness and collapsing families). The enemy is not an out-of-control bubble-prone capitalism; it is not corrupt, right-wing, big-business-controlled government. Fear and hate are to be directed instead against classic ‘others’ defined by their alternative ideologies and policy priorities, alien religions, strange ethnicities, poverty and ‘lunatic’ opposition to the prosperity and democracy that US supremacy bestows on all who submit. Against the enemy of terrorism pre-emptive wars and tough ‘homeland security’ are reasonable, urgent obligations for all good and godly people; opponents of this approach, including Muslims, Continental Europeans, civil libertarians, critical media and US ‘liberals’, all merge into increasingly undifferentiated lesser foes; because they are not ‘with us’, they ‘are against us’.

Unilateral military globalisation entails massive costs. The surveys of global attitudes carried out by the Washington-based Pew Research Center reveal rising hatred for US policy on every continent. Diplomatic reverses and military losses grow. Coping with them in the short run (the outlays for invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan) is very costly. In the longer run, military unilateralism opens a vista of vast future spending. The costs of this new empire will require further reduced expenditure on social programmes, tax increases, even larger government deficits, or some mix of all three. Any combination risks serious instability. The risks and dangers built into the Bush programme are only aggravated by the fact that the US now needs to borrow $2 billion per day from foreign lenders. Deficits and debt have swelled to a size beyond manageability and without historical precedent.

The Republican leadership comprises those who propose a militarised US unilateralism as the next phase of capitalist globalisation, a continued reduction of what little remains of the US welfare state, and a return to the kind of private capitalism that existed in the US before 1929. The Republican mass base is religiously fundamentalist, celebrating US unilateralism as a Christian ‘crusade’ and recruiting its legions from a mass of exhausted, indebted and increasingly frustrated workers. The Republican strategy is simple: facilitate and subsidise the Christian fundamentalists to recruit those made desperate by falling wages, the costs of war and the relentless reduction of state services. The Democratic strategy is not only to gather all those frightened by unilateralism and Christian fundamentalism but also to appeal to workers by suggesting that less war and less unilateralism might make possible a slower reduction of the welfare state. The Democrats hope that enough workers will see that as a better bet than fundamentalism for providing them with at least some relief from the staggering blood and financial costs of empire.

But whoever the victor is in the US presidential election, the basic problems will be the same, and neither party’s strategy offers any solution. The old question returns to confront everyone: how long will workers accept the decline in their life circumstances produced by the contradictions of a US-led global capitalism?

Rejection of multiculturalism, hostility to European ‘soft’ power politics and a deep belief in the moral imperative of a certain kind of liberty drive the neo-cons. Their rise is intertwined with the rightward shift of the US. Their long march to power has coincided with rising tides of Christian and free-market fundamentalisms. Serious division exists in these ranks, but the tensions between the US and much of the rest of the world today can be traced to neo-con ideology.

The neo-Rons

The presidency of Ronald Reagan united and empowered the neo-con generation now ensconced in the US departments of state and defence. This group’s imprint is most visible in the doctrine of preventative war and in US policy in Israel-Palestine and North Korea. The conservatives rest assured in US dominance of the globe; militarily and economically the US must fulfill its responsibility, remake a troubled world, confront enemies, prevent rivals and seize the opportunities offered it as freedom’s superpower.

Freedom and liberty have very specific associations in this world-view: the limited set of rights established or intended by the framers of the US constitution. Some adherents to this ideology are fond of likening masses to Lilliputians and leaders to Gulliver. This conception reveals a moral comfort in deception and strong-arm tactics – when the giant must act in the interest of little people.

Leo Strauss was an inspirational guru. His belief in powerful, aggressive policy was shaped in reaction to his personal experience of Weimar Germany. Permissive democracy is naturally weak. Military strength and sacrifice of excessive personal freedom are required to combat tyranny and avoid defeat. A cast of menacing internal and external enemies perpetually threatens. Supremacy of Western culture, US constitutional democracy and individualism are melded with free enterprise. The US is the embodiment of strength, morality and civilisation. Opponents are either deluded (as in the case of the Europeans) or threatening aggressors. Diplomacy and compromise reveal weakness, menace freedom and encourage tyranny, relativism and chaos. Survival demands martial mastery of myriad threats. The great texts of Western philosophy are not simply the expressions of one system of human organisation; they contain the true guide to supremely meritorious society. Alternative philosophies and political structures are inferior and threatening. Philosophy and ideology lead human activity, determine society’s success and failure. The majority of people see only shadows on the walls of Socrates’ cave; an enlightened vanguard must lead.

Strauss handed down an ideology of fear to the first neo-cons. Steeped in the paranoia of red scares, the Great Depression, Cold War hysteria and the New York immigrant experience, a group of anti-communist liberals groped towards an acceptably patriotic world-view. Fearful of democracy’s weaknesses and contradictions, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Norman Podhoretz and Daniel Bell (see the box ‘First-generation neo-cons’) strove to motivate US primacy as a bulwark against Soviet aggression. Disturbed by the pilloried leftism of family members and their ethnic Brooklyn neighbours, these success-oriented young men found solace and acceptability by celebrating the morality of US power.

Suspicion of leftists and creeping communists ruled supreme during the neo-cons’ formative years. Hysterical fear justified attack, which was trumpeted as defence of imperiled morality and liberty. Compromise was veiled aid to mortal enemies. Arms reduction and trade normalisation marked surrender. The neo-cons’ alliance with Rand Corporation heavyweight Albert Wohlstetter (see box, below) symbolised their entrance into Republican power circles.

Wohlstetter worked with longtime Rumsfeld ally Kenneth Adelman and influenced and introduced Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle to each other. Wohlstetter’s charge to influence policy through think-tank activity and association with Washington elites offered the neo-cons a potent model. Their struggles against arms reduction facilitated rapid ascension to prominent roles in policy research and implementation.

Neo-conservatism is defined by Straussian logic, Wohlstetter method and Republican interest. The neo-cons’ proximity to power, academic position and media reach are now unrivalled. The media component of neo-conservatism is important. Hundreds of books, periodicals, lectures and appearances are undertaken annually. Irving Kristol, Glazier, Norman Podheretz and Bell have written more than 14 books, many very successful, and founded or edited at least eight magazines between them. There are presently nine avowedly neo-con periodicals and seven major neo-con think-tanks or lobbies.

The neo-con think-tanks include the American Enterprise, Hudson and Manhattan institutes, the John M Olin Foundation and the infamous Project For The New American Century (Pnac). Books are published, articles penned and thousands of radio and television appearances scheduled. Newsweek International is run by neo-conservative fellow traveller Fareed Zakaria. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is staffed by prominent neo-con evangelists. The New York Times editorial staff also includes sympathisers, and The New York Post, The Weekly Standard, and the US journals New Republic, Commentary and The Public Interest are all edited by movement activists. Rupert Murdoch’s vast media empire is similarly populated by neo-con editors, guests and leading lights. Proponents of the ideology are heard every day by millions of Americans.

Neo-con intellectual activity in social science departments, think-tanks and lobbies is cutting edge and highly influential. The movement’s think-tanks operate well-funded lobbies, write policy papers and host conferences attended by the top tier of the Bush administration.

At a February American Enterprise Institute (AEI )conference, Bush thanked the neo-cons for their work and spoke of their massed ranks in his administration. On its website Pnac boasts of its influence and refers to Bush as a neo-con. In a September 2001 letter to Bush, Pnac advocated pursuit of the following: first, capture or kill Osama bin Laden through military action in Afghanistan; second, remove Saddam Hussein regardless of any linkage between him and 11 September; third, pressurise Syria and Iran into ceasing all support for Hezbollah (‘appropriate measures of retaliation’ were urged in the event of resistance); fourth, support Israel and offer no support to the Palestinian Authority until it moves against terror; fifth, expand military funding to sustain the above actions while projecting influence and preparing for larger looming confrontation. The letter was signed by 41 prominent neo-cons.

Specific policy suggestions aside, the content of the Bush letter is very similar to Pnac’s June 1997 ‘Statement of Principles’. Of the 25 signatories to the ‘Statement of Principles’ at least five (Cheney, the US special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and US Middle East envoy, convicted perjurer and Iran-Contra veteran Elliot Abrams) now serve in the Bush administration. Also on the list is the president’s brother – the Florida governor Jeb Bush.

The potency of Pnac and similar think-tanks is enormous. Above all else they concentrate on fear and vulnerability to cataclysmic attack. The cast of threats and methods of confrontation has evolved, but the ethical mandate for pre-emptive action has survived the test of time. The neo-cons’ sense of their own success in the Cold War invigorates their certainty of method and aggression of action. Domestic and foreign opponents feel the sting of bold impatience with dissent. Conflicts conceived as confrontations with evil allow little room for polite debate.

Neo-conservatism has long struggled for the influence it now commands. It seeks to control mortal threats (real or imagined) before destruction is unleashed. The revolution in military affairs offered by Bush, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz was designed by Wohlstetter and friends at the Rand Institute in the 1970s; the neo-cons waited in the wings ever since. The two Gulf wars, Venezuela and Afghanistan have been the test phases of a ‘new’ strategic disposition. The UN, Nato, strategic alliances and military assets are being reshuffled to advance US power.

Why now? Globalisation, emerging rivals, economic weakness and multiculturalism menace. Alongside goods, services and wealth flow people, cultures and ideologies. This process has stretched inequalities – fuelling outrage, resistance and chaos. It also furnishes great fortunes and business opportunities. Neo-con anger feeds on the disorder, opposition, risk and danger that globalisation fosters. The flows of trade and wealth are embraced as civilising and positive. The proliferation of cultures and forms of resistance is hated and feared. Multilateral policy-making, perpetual compromise and tolerance of disorder and dysfunction are perceived to be lurking everywhere.

The neo-cons recommend impassioned reaction. They offer an alternative vision of globalisation in which the US takes control of a chaotic world. Opponents, rival ideas and rising powers are brought to heel.

The collapse of the USSR and the less developed state of EU and Chinese power offer a unique and fleeting opportunity – to be seized by force if necessary. The US can and must act to forestall the emergence of rival powers. Otherwise a flood of alien ideas, cultures and agendas will subvert US liberty, ‘civilisation’ and stability. Strength of purpose, economic primacy and a monopoly on military prowess can be used to harvest the good while restricting or destroying evil.

Modern America is open to this approach. Primed by a conservative corporate media and more than 20 years of rightward drift, Americans are profoundly frightened. They are scared of economic forces exporting good jobs, bringing waves of immigrants, lowering wages and raising global instability. The US middle class is under crushing pressure. Wages are not keeping up with spending. Debts are rising and profound insecurity besets personal, professional and financial life. The promises of new technologies and stock market wealth were false. The economy is weak and the 2000 presidential election called basic understandings of democracy into question. Rounds of corporate scandal tarnish captains of industry. The 11 September attacks and waves of arrests, rumours and threats terrify. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, terror alerts and climbing unemployment keep fear levels high. Proliferating police power and receding civil liberty worry many.

Neo-cons offer a world remade. Media pundits and politicians share and feed off fear, offering neo-con foreign policy as the solution. But rival voices, most on the right, compete fiercely with the neo-cons; the latter do not sit alone at the tables of power. So, conservative Christian and business interests must be accommodated, thus convoluting and complicating policy.

Meanwhile, Europeans struggle with the alterations required for union. Different theories, cultures and traditions coexist, influencing each other. US adventures are seen as crude, militaristic, brutal and anachronistic. Fear of US influence and threat permeate the European air. None of this is to deny that millions of Americans see their own country’s actions much the same way. But alternative opinions get little publicity. Thus, conservative conceptions are potent, ubiquitous and little examined in mainstream US discourse.

This results in a growing assessment gap. Understandings of events and actions, particularly US actions, are increasingly divergent. The coverage of the war in Iraq is only the most glaring example. Where others see US failings, Americans hear of triumph. Neo-cons play a role in this process, but are not the only factor. US mass media offer a narrow range of opinion. Criticism is rare and tends to be dismissed or drowned out by the chorus of voices supporting official action and opinion. Critics are frightened – with increasingly good reason. The rise of an ideology of absolute good engaged in fierce combat with uncivilised and driven forces of evil is aiding the decline of internal debate. It remains to be seen how much further this process can run without provoking greater conflict.Max Fraad Wolff is a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst