JWSR Vol X1, Number 2, Special Issue, December 2006




Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. 
Empire*

Foreign capital is able to determine possible governments by incarnating itself 
as an indigenous ruling class. — George Grant ()

introduction

Th is article challenges the idea that working towards a global civil society,¹
in present circumstances, is a laudable goal. We live in the age of the US Empire, 
which aggressively asserts its own right to unilateral action, while demanding 
that the sovereignty of every other political community be breached. To the 
extent that proponents of global society² forecast and approve the “inevitable” 
weakening of popular and national sovereignties of rooted political communities, 
they are, regardless of their intentions, objectively aiding the unilateral power of 
the US Empire. Instead of global society, I argue that the goal should be sup-
port for deep democracy everywhere and inter-national solidarity from below. 

In the 1960s, the left branded US imperi-
alism the major enemy of social justice in the 
world. Such talk faded after the war against 
Vietnam and almost disappeared after com-
munism fell in Eastern Europe. It’s not that 
the American brand of informal empire dis-
appeared. It continued through US inf lu-
ences on other states’ policies, the sway of 
US corporations abroad on host govern-
ments, US military power, and the power of 
the Washington-based financial institutions. 
But, the discourse changed and raged around 
the softer term globalization. In the past few 
years, imperialism talk has roared back, led 
this time by the political right, who gave it a 
positive sheen. Some on the left have joined 

in too, in an exciting new literature, revising 
Marxist and Leninist critiques of imperial-
ism. But, much of the political left and centre 
are still mired in aspirations for cosmopolitan-
ism, which inadvertently obscure struggles for 
popular and national sovereignty. This paper 
examines the limits of cosmopolitanism for 
democracy, critiques the nature of US power, 
and discusses how a reasserted US empire has 
sparked the revival of nationalisms by look-
ing at the cases of nationalism in the six top 
oil-exporting countries to the US. The paper 
concludes with inquiries into people-to-people 
inter-nationalism and whether citizen-based 
democracy is possible without sovereignty.

abstract:

* I wish to thank Alejandro Alvarez for a thorough and judicious critique. I am 
grateful to Josée Johnston  for an excellent critique and editorial suggestions. Th anks as 
well to the perceptive comments of an anonymous reviewer.

¹.  For a more thorough treatment of my assessment of the problems of the concept 
of global civil society, see Laxer and Halperin ().

².  Not all advocates of global civil society support the weakening of national or 
popular sovereignty. For Jocelyne Couture () liberal nationalism is compatible with 
moral cosmopolitan doctrine, but not with legal cosmopolitanism.

Gordon Laxer
Parkland Institute
University of Alberta
11045 Saskatchewan Drive
Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E1 
Canada 
gord.laxer@ualberta.ca
http://www.ualberta.ca/~parkland/

Gordon Laxer

journal of world-systems research, xi, , december , –
Special Issue: Globalizations from ‘Above’ and ‘Below’ – The Future of World Society
http://jwsr.ucr.edu/
issn 1076–156x 
© 2005 Gordon Laxer

mailto:gord.laxer@ualberta.ca
http://www.ualberta.ca/~parkland
http://jwsr.ucr.edu


Gordon Laxer318 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

By inter-national solidarity, I do not mean only state-to-state support, but also 
inter-national support from citizens movements for the sovereignty of demo-
cratic political communities and regions wherever they are found. Nations are 
understood here in the French Revolution sense as “citizen-peoples” rather than 
states, but not in the French Revolution sense of a “nation one and indivisible,” in 
which the rights of minority nations within countries are crushed.³

George W. Bush deserves credit. Talk about imperialism almost disappeared 
for 20 years. Now it has returned. In the 1960s and 1970s, the left branded US 
imperialism as the major enemy of national and social liberation in the world. 
Such talk faded after the war against Vietnam, and almost vanished, even amongst 
the left, after communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. 
It is not that the US abandoned its largely informal empire in the intervening 
period. Far from it. It continued to hold sway as before, largely through US infl u-
ences, both attractive and coercive, on the policies of other states. Intermittently, 
it resorted to outright invasion. But, the discourse changed. It swirled around 
globalization—often a cleansed term for imperialism.

Now empire talk has roared back. Terms like Imperial America, US imperi-
alism, the imperial grand strategy, the New Imperial State and Th e New Rome 
are in the air. Instead of being the epithet hurled by the left that it was in the 
1960s, talk about the US empire has been revived by the political right and given 
a positive sheen (Brzezinski 1997; Ferguson 2002).⁴ It has become fashionable to 
compare the American Empire with Britain’s informal “free trade” empire of the 
nineteenth century or with the Roman Empire. But US empire talk is not the 
sole preserve of the right. Some on the left have joined the debate, revising earlier 
approaches to understanding empire formulated by Lenin and other Marxists 
(Gowan 1999; Ali 2003; Brenner 2003; Harvey 2003; Mann 2003; Meiksins 
Wood 2003; Wallerstein 2003).⁵ I will examine two such formulations, but fi rst I 
look at why many progressives refuse to confront the politics of anti-imperialism 
and are still mired in imagining a world of moral cosmopolitanism.

moral aspirations for cosmopolitanism

Th e US Empire is fl exing its muscles, but its ability to continue to domi-
nate, is uncertain. Th e unilateral actions of the US are fostering antidotes—the 
growth of popular, anti-imperial nationalisms and regionalisms, often backed by 
governments which attempt to gain allies for greater sovereignty. Craig Calhoun 
(1997: 8) argued that in earlier forms of empire, “colonialism drove nationalism 
forward even while resisting it…no matter how elite the anti-colonialists and 
how elitist their agendas for post-colonial rule, their claims for sovereignty came 
by defi nition from ‘below’, from ‘the people’. ”⁶ Nationalisms are powerful at mass 
mobilization because they have the unique ability to move people, Calhoun con-
tinues, as a positive source of meaning and inspiration, give a sense of place and 
of mutual commitment for large numbers. Nationalisms create a high degree of 
cohesion, without which self-governing societies are not possible. Th ey can and 
have created the soil in which democracy deepened and the power of ordinary 
citizens was enhanced. Of course, progressive, internationalist nationalisms do 
not inevitably triumph. Th ey are usually contested by reactionary versions of 
nationalisms, over issues such as rule by the people, openness to the rest of the 
world, and racial and other forms of inclusivity.

Th e question for us is whether, and under what circumstances current 
anti-colonial nationalisms are pushing governments and political communities 
towards deepening democracy, and social and class transformations. When com-
bined with the potential powers which national and subnational governments, 
even in weaker states, still possess, but often do not use for progressive ends, 
I argue that anti-imperial nationalisms have great potential for social change. 
I examine the cases of struggles for national and popular sovereignty in major 
oil exporting countries and the impact this is having on the US Empire. I also 
explore whether these national struggles have advanced, or retarded progress 
toward democracy and social transformation.

Before proceeding, I briefl y address two common objections to my argu-
ments. First, there may be other ways to reach deep democratic transformation 
than through anti-imperial nationalisms. Second, can I substantiate my claim 
that certain versions of global civil society and cosmopolitanism help to justify 
American unilateral power and undermine claims of anti-imperial contestations 
for popular national sovereignty?³.  Th e concept “plurination” states recognizes the rights of minority nations. Th e 

term is used in Ecuador and several other Latin American countries (Egan ).
⁴.  See also Richard Haass, “Imperial America,” Foreign Aff airs, Nov. , ; 

Th omas Friedman, “What the World Needs Now,” New York Times, Mar. , ; and 
Michael Ignatieff , “Th e American Empire. Th e Burden,” New York Times, Jan. , .

⁵.  Th en there are Hardt and Negri (), who deny that there is an American 
Empire.

⁶.  Arguments in the next two sentences are taken from Calhoun (: ; and 
: ).



Gordon Laxer320 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

to be rooted in domestic social networks and connected to each other more than 
episodically; common ways of seeing the world; contentious in action as well as 
words.” In contrast to transnational social movements, transnational advocacy 
networks (I call them “international advocacy networks”) involve a small number 
of morally motivated activists, and do not usually engage in mass mobilizations. 
Th ey are a “set of relevant organizations working internationally with shared 
values, a common discourse, and dense exchanges of information” (Keck and 
Sikkink 1998b: 46). International advocacy networks cannot be subsumed into 
notions of global civil society or transnational social movements. In this regard, 
Keck and Sikkink (1998a: 237) conclude that “however much we are seeing the 
increasing interpenetration of domestic and international politics, transposing 
sets of categories from one to the other seems unlikely to make sense of the 
simultaneity of both.” I concur.

Transnational social movements and international advocacy networks are 
not the same as nationally-focused struggles. Cosmopolitan assumptions about 
power drifting away from countries and nations obscure evidence that even in 
campaigns and organizations which are thought to have most escaped national 
enclosures, solidarity ties are usually denser, and the capacity to mass mobilize is 
greater, at national than at supranational levels. After studying the anti-apartheid 
movement, Greenpeace and Amnesty international, movements or organizations 
which are commonly thought to be exemplars of transnationalism, Christian 
Lahusen (1999: 190) concluded that “social movement action above the level of 
the nation-state is still organized and coordinated to a greater degree between 
national entities than across them and is therefore rather international than 
transnational in character.”

National movements are those which contend largely against national power 
structures, have all or most of their supporters in one country or nation, and 
display distinctive cultures of contention. National movement organizations 
may coordinate campaigns inter-nationally with other nationally-based orga-
nizations, but that does not automatically make them transnational. It is only 
when issues, targets, mobilization and organization are truly transnational, that 
a movement can be accurately considered fully transnational. In practice, move-
ments are often hybrids of the national, the inter-national and the transnational 
regarding issues, targets, mobilization and organization. 

I believe it is important to distinguish amongst the three levels because 
of the widespread cosmopolitan assumption that transnational movements 
have replaced national organizations, and that the simple act of coordinating 
beyond-the-nation is suffi  cient to make a campaign or movement transnational. 
According to these criteria, a transnational social movement requires regular, 
long-term interaction across nations, the presence of common frames and shared 

Th e fi rst objection is easily dealt with. I do not claim that progressive, inter-
nationalist nationalisms are the only important expressions of common iden-
tity, community and solidaristic action. Religious movements which conceive of 
a religious community on a transnational basis, can also profoundly unify and 
motivate large numbers of people, in ways similar to that of nationalisms. Th e 
jury is out on whether such religious communities will in future both challenge 
the power of the US Empire and become genuine political communities which 
can also lead to democracy-from-below and class leveling. I do not rule out the 
possibility that this will occur, but we have seen few signs of this seriously emerg-
ing. As well, there are those who claim that contestations based on transnational 
mobilizing for social justice, off er the most hopeful challenges to the unilateral 
power of the US. I turn to a discussion of this possibility.

Some argue that transnational social movements have emerged as a crucial 
site for identity, community and solidarity (Kaldor et al.: 2003). To say a move-
ment is “transnational” is more limited and more accurate than to say it is “global.” 
To be “transnational” does not require that a movement encompass all conti-
nents and most countries, just that it transcends many of them. Th e anti-war 
movement, the World Social Forum and the anti-corporate globalization move-
ment are commonly seen as examples of current transnational or global social 
movements with the potential for both transformation and as counterweights 
to US power. I do not dispute the radical potential of these movements. Indeed, 
I have participated in all of them. But, what I fi nd problematic is the automatic 
interpretations of such movements as unalloyed examples of transnationalism 
or expressions of global civil society. In the interests of brevity, I refer readers 
to publications which I and my coauthors⁷ have written on these issues (Laxer 
2001; Johnston and Laxer 2003; Laxer and Halperin 2003). I summarize some 
of the points here.

How do we know that a movement is transnational or global? Th omas Risse-
Kappen (1995) contends that transnational implies “regular interactions across 
national boundaries when at least one actor is a non-state agent or does not oper-
ate on behalf of a national government or an intergovernmental organization.” 
Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998a) sharply distinguish between “trans-
national social movements” and “transnational advocacy networks.” A transna-
tional social movement is usually built on concrete networks of shared locality, 
experiences, or kinship. Its key resource is its capacity for mass mobilizing. 
Tarrow (1998) argues that in transnational social movements, “challengers need 

⁷.  I alone am accountable for the views expressed below, however.



Gordon Laxer322 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

norms across national boundaries. Consensus formation across national move-
ments takes a long time and can be said to be transnational only once formula-
tions are put in more universal language. If on the other hand, the framing of 
issues remains diff erent, mass mobilizations and organizations stay separate and 
targets distinct, we are dealing with movements that are primarily national.

Th e powerful anti-war movement, which fl exed its muscles on February 15, 
2003 fi ve weeks before the invasion of Iraq, was the largest coordinated series 
of demonstrations in world history. Kaldor et al. (2003: 3) characterized it as a 
“global popular mobilization.” But, it had national, international and transna-
tional (rather than global) aspects. Th e transnational part involved an unknown 
number of the demonstrators who were motivated to march primarily or exclu-
sively from a horror of war and invasion, but who had little or no identifi cation 
with the national political community in which the demonstration took place. 
But, there were strong national dimensions to the protests. It was no accident, 
that the largest demonstrations were held in countries such as Britain, Italy, 
Spain, and Australia, whose governments supported the invasion, in contrast to 
lower turnouts in countries such as France and Germany where their govern-
ments did not.⁸ In the pro-invasion countries, many citizens clearly marched at 
least partly against their own governments, trying to change their positions. Th e 
inter-national aspect was expressed when nationally-focussed movements coor-
dinated their activities with counterparts in other countries.

Rather than look at the radical potential of re-emerging nationalisms, in part 
sparked by the aggressive US Empire, many progressive and left intellectuals are 
still advocates for abstract, moral cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism was never 
seriously on the political agenda, even in the 1990s and conditions for its real-
ization turned decidedly more negative after the attacks of September 11, 2001 
(9/11). Th ose changes include the faltering of the neoliberal agenda of global inte-
gration whose success depends on multilateralism, the strengthening of borders 
rather than progress towards a borderless world, and rising public expectations 
that governments can again do more for them than civil society, corporations 
or markets. I briefl y examine objections to sovereignty, nationalisms and self-
determination of some in the cosmopolitan camp, before exploring the nature of 
recent national struggles against the US Empire.

Much recent discourse among progressive intellectuals still revolves around 
cosmopolitan concepts such as global civil society, which contend that state 

power is retracting as sovereignty leaks up to transnational institutions and 
down to the local.⁹ As Ulrich Beck writes, “[g]lobalization—however the word is 
understood—implies the weakening of state sovereignty and state structures.” In 
contrast to modernity’s fi rst stage—where solidarity was limited to the enclosed 
space of the nation state—identities are reformulated beyond state boundaries, 
embedded in “intersecting transnational loyalties.” Th e cosmopolitan project 
“contradicts and replaces the nation-state project,” implying a shift in confl ict 
from capital-labor towards cosmopolitan movements and counter-movements. 
Beck (2000: 86, 90, 92, 102) sees possibilities not in national movements, but in 
new political subjects, which he alludes to as “movements and parties of world 
citizens.” As states lose sovereignty, democratic resistance is depicted as either 
local, or transnational, but not national. Th e Internet is seen by many cosmopoli-
tans as helping to build new, non-territorial, non-national forms of community 
in the time-compressed space created by globalization (Smith and Smythe 1999: 
84). Richard Falk’s concept of “Globalization from below” (1997) is a radical ver-
sion of global civil society. It is understood to include diverse eff orts to moderate 
the logic of capitalism and implement substantive democracy.

 David Held and others have put forward proposals to create legal institu-
tions for the governance of cosmopolitan democracy. In this model, Held (1995: 
ix, x, 233) argued that the nation-state will “wither away,” in the sense that it would 
be but one focus of power and authority. Many advocates of cosmopolitanism 
share Held’s hopes for the withering away of the state, because they view state 
sovereignty as in confl ict, in many instances, with human rights. As Allan Bock 
put it “all too often the concept of sovereignty in ‘international law’…provides 
a cover for domestic thuggery.”¹⁰ Since the end of the Cold war, such state-led 
atrocities gave rise to increasing calls for “humanitarian intervention” to support 
human rights. Mary Kaldor’s (2001) argument exemplifi es this perspective. She 
sees “humanitarian intervention” as a major expression of an emerging global civil 
society. She argues that “non-intervention” was the dominant principle in inter-
national aff airs during the cold war and that this was replaced in the 1990s by “the 
presumption that there is a right to use armed force in support of humanitarian 
objectives.” Although there is not “a consensus about military intervention,” it has 
“become widely accepted” (109–110). Kaldor is hopeful about the emergence of 
a global humanitarian regime which includes a growing consensus about respect 
for human rights, a strengthening of international law, a growing readiness of 

⁸.  BBC News, Feb. , . “Millions Join Global Anti-war Protests.” 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2765215.stm, accessed June , .

⁹.  Th is paragraph is partly based on Johnston and Laxer (: –).
¹⁰.  Bock, Allan. . “Eye on the Empire.” Apr. . 

http://www.antiwar.com/bock/b04101.html, accessed June , .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2765215.stm
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/b04101.html


Gordon Laxer324 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

governments to give resources (money and troops) for humanitarian purposes 
and above all civil society groups who focus on humanitarian intervention (140). 
Kaldor also asserts, astoundingly, that changing international norms “refl ect a 
growing global consensus about the equality of human beings and the responsi-
bility to prevent suff ering wherever it takes place” (110). Would it were so.

Such views are naïve and their proponents risk becoming apologists for 
the US imperial project. Humanitarian intervention, often involves military 
intervention and the latter are led only by a country or countries in the North 
against a country in the South. Some have taken the next step¹¹ and enshrined 
the principle of civilian inviolability and have construed humanitarian inter-
vention by coalitions of the willing (Cohen 2004: 8). As Jean L. Cohen (2004) 
cogently argues, “the sovereignty-based model of international law appears to 
be ceding not to cosmopolitan justice but to a diff erent bid to restructure the 
world order: the project of empire.” Bush cloaks his “war on terror,” in rhetoric 
about a renewed commitment to human rights and democracy. Diminishing the 
“right of self-determination” of other countries fi ts well with the law of imperial 
power which “rests on the willingness of the superpower to sustain world order, 
but…the superpower only plays by the rules of its own making when its suits 
its interest…imperial power is above the rules of the order, while smaller states 
are subjected to them” (Risse 2003). Some trace the current principle of sover-
eignty back to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, but that is misleading because 
Westphalia did not recognize the sovereign equality of non-European countries 
or popular democracy. International recognition of sovereignty and self-deter-
mination are recent gains and have espoused very diff erent norms. Th ey date 
from the 1960s era of decolonization of the Global South and are embodied in 
UN General Assembly resolutions 1514 and 1541. “Inherent in this conception 
of sovereign equality, [is] the newly generalized principle of nonintervention,” 
writes Cohen (2004: 12). 

However, the US doctrine of preemptive strike has thrown us back to old 
style colonialism. “Humanitarian interventions,” have been led by countries of the 
North and carried out exclusively in the South, if we include the old Yugoslavia in 
that category. Kaldor lists the following as sites of such interventions: Northern 
Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Kosovo, East Timor and 
Sierra Leone. If international norms are applied wherever there are human rights 
abuses, there would have been humanitarian and military interventions to stop 

the illegal invasion of Iraq, the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, 
the mining of harbours in Nicaragua in the 1980s, and military actions against 
Chechnya. Applying ”international norms” by the strong versus only the weak is 
a double standard, widely seen as recolonization in the South. Such hypocrisy 
abets the principle of empire. At the present conjuncture, a global humanitarian 
republic is not on the agenda, but the US National Security Strategy (2002) 
which asserts the US right to get rid of any regime, anywhere, that might some 
day become hostile to what the United States considers its vital interests, is on 
the agenda.¹² Recognizing humanitarian intervention can be good if done under 
the auspices of the United Nations and in ways that do not undermine the prin-
ciples of national self-determination. Cohen (2004) outlines constructive ways 
the two can be supported simultaneously.

Cosmopolitan perspectives tend to involve more normative assertions than 
empirical answers (Brennan 1997). Catherine Eschle (2002: 65) argues they do 
not invoke global civil society to make empirical claims, but to “justify a cosmo-
politan ethical stance that posits the existence of a single moral community.” 
Because their orientation is “not to take power,” their stance may be more about 
complaining about the world than changing it.

 Concepts such as “global civil society,” “transnational social movements,” and 
“globalization from below” have positive associations, but are frequently left ill-
defi ned and underdeveloped. Part of the problem is that “civil society” is a con-
tested concept which developed in the context of domestic states (Taylor 1997). 
John Locke imagined civil society as a sphere independent of the state and cen-
trally located in the market, a view that justifi ed private property rights (Arthur 
1970: 5). Once these rights were won in the West, the concept fell into disuse, 
to be revived in Eastern Europe in the 1970s by those attempting to create a 
sphere independent of totalitarian states. When communism fell, the concept 
morphed again and was wielded in Eastern Europe by advocates of capitalism 
rather than democracy (Stubbs 1996). For liberals of both eras, the main confl icts 
are between state and civil society. Th e state must be limited because civil society 
embodies superior values of individual freedom. In contrast to liberal-pluralists 
who tend to see transnational actors as unambiguous democrats and downplay 
inequalities, Marxists and Gramscians view civil society as the contested space of 
class relations and production (Macdonald 1994: 276). If corporations are inte-

¹¹.  Cohen (: ) refers to authors who cite the Kosovo intervention as a “consti-
tutional moment.”

¹².  North, David. . “Th e War against Iraq and America’s Drive for World 
Domination.” Oct. , http://www.serendipity.li/wot/north01.htm, accessed June , 
.

http://www.serendipity.li/wot/north01.htm


Gordon Laxer326 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

refuses to sign many international agreements such as the land mines treaty or 
the jurisdiction of the World Court, which would reduce US sovereignty. Th ose 
the US ratifi es, it declares a reservation to negate additional rights protection.¹³ 
Th e US often ignores or continually postpones unfavorable rulings by transna-
tional institutions, such as NAFTA or the WTO. Th is is the perfect formula 
for imperial rule. Reduce the autonomy of other countries, but make an excep-
tion for the leadership of “the world’s only indispensable nation,” as Madeleine 
Albright put it. To a lesser extent, other powerful countries—China and those 
in Western Europe—also retain a great deal of sovereignty.

Historically, cosmopolitanism has been an elite project of empires (Calhoun 
2002). While promoting diversity, empires refuse to recognize democratic self-
determination. As Calhoun puts it, “Th e tolerance of diversity in great imperial 
and trading cities has always refl ected, among other things, precisely the absence 
of need or opportunity to organize political self-rule” (2002: 872). Th e litmus 
test is whether today’s proponents of cosmopolitanism celebrate diversity at the 
expense of self-rule and whether they reveal or hide the dominating nature of the 
US Empire. In a very thorough and perceptive critique, Atilio A. Boron (2005: 
10, 20) shows how Hardt and Negri decenter empire away from the United 
States and in fact, often celebrate the US role in integrating the world. Negri 
went so far as to characterize the US occupation of Iraq as “nation building,” not 
“colonization.”

Having addressed cosmopolitan objections, I now turn to an examination of 
the new imperial talk and its connections with universalism, globalization and 
cosmopolitanism. Th en, I critique the nature of the US Empire and its Achilles 
heel of depending on rule through other states. I conclude with a discussion 
of how a reasserted US empire has sparked the revival of sovereignty-seeking 
nationalisms, and how this is contributing to a shift from the politics of global-
ization-from-below, towards anti-imperialist politics which contest government 
policies through marches, multi-level movements and elections.

imperial talk

Much as George W. Bush, the practitioner, deserves credit for spreading the 
recognition that the US is acting like an empire, he was not the pioneer. In his 
1997 book, Th e Grand Chessboard, Zbigniew Brzezinski outlined the best strat-
egy for American “hegemony of a new type” in language which harkened back to 
Imperial Rome: “Th e three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to pre-
vent collusion and maintain dependence amongst the vassals, to keep tributar-
ies compliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together” 
(Brzezinski 1997:40). Although Brzezinski had held offi  ce in Jimmy Carter’s 
Democratic Party government, Brzezinski’s book purportedly attained biblical 

grally part of, and often dominate, civil society, then empowering civil society 
to limit the power of transnational corporations is nonsensical. Marxists tend 
to agree with liberals that capitalist power has been aided by neoliberalism and 
the ubiquitous globalization discourse. I take a Gramscian perspective on these 
issues.

If many of the advocates of global civil society are neither Marxist nor lib-
eral of either the classical or neo-liberal variety, how can we characterize their 
perspectives? Th ey range from left populists, to anarchists to political liberals, 
who believe in human rights and democracy, may or may not be anti-corporate, 
but who accept classical liberal premises of a fundamental division between state 
and civil society. In theory at least, they modify the liberal conception by exclud-
ing corporations, the market and national level spheres from global civil society 
(Kaldor et al. 2003: 4). For them strengthening global civil society can deepen 
democracy only if the former is non-corporate as well as non-state. But in prac-
tice, it is diffi  cult to ignore corporate infl uences on society. To their credit, Kaldor, 
Anheier, and Glasius (2003: 9) discuss the growing “ ‘corporatization’ of NGOs 
as well as the expansion of business into local and global civil society.” Th is brings 
their perspective closer in practice to a Gramscian conception.

Civil society is an ambiguous concept. Globalizing the idea creates more con-
fusion. If civil society is mainly about creating a sphere that is independent of the 
state, what state or power structure is global civil society supposed to be inde-
pendent from? Th ere is no global state. How can most people be “global citizens” 
when there are no democratic structures above the level of countries conducive 
to their participation?

Whatever the motivation of their advocates, globalization and cosmopoli-
tan talk help legitimize America’s imperial ambitions by devaluing international 
strictures against non-intervention. By undervaluing the right to the sovereignty 
of countries, many proponents of global civil society obfuscate the importance of 
progressive, anti-imperial nationalisms and popular national sovereignty.

 Imperialists have always justifi ed grabbing other peoples resources by invok-
ing lofty goals such as spreading Christianity, democracy, human rights or peace. 
Th ey came to deliver those in the Global South from local tyrants. Instead of 
realizing such goals, imperialists stayed to rule through local despots. In practice, 
doctrines which breach national sovereignty help justify the US contravening 
the sovereignty of weak countries. Meanwhile the US retains its sovereignty, and 

¹³.  Roth, Kenneth. . “Th e Charade of US Ratifi cation of International Human 
Rights Treaties.” Chicago Journal of International Law. Fall. http://www.globalpolicy.org/
empire/un/2003/0806charade.htm, accessed June , .

http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/un/2003/0806charade.htm


Gordon Laxer328 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

authority in George W. Bush’s administration. In 1999, Henry Kissinger declared 
that globalization is a soft term for the US Empire. “[W]hat is called globaliza-
tion is really another name for the dominant role of the United States.”¹⁴ 

Th e US is ascendant, but does it express its power in a unilateral-imperial 
way or in a multilateral-global capitalist way? Contradictory forces pull the US 
in both directions. Th e logic of territory, the fairly autonomous role of the mili-
tarized US state, and American, big power nationalism all lead toward US uni-
lateralism and assertions of US sovereignty. In contrast, the logic of capitalism 
leads in the direction of multilateral agreements with other countries, to break 
down borders to corporate investments. Th is contradiction is discussed below in 
relation to the writings of David Harvey.

Washington insider, Richard Haass, urges Americans to “re-conceive their 
role from one of a traditional nation-state to an imperial power.”¹⁵ Haass draws a 
distinction between imperial power and imperialism, characterizing the latter as 
exploitive and involving territorial control. Glossing over the millions of deaths 
caused by British imperial policy, which was documented so well in Davis’ (2001) 
Late Victorian Holocausts, Haass argues that imperial power relies largely on 
informal means. Force is employed as a last resort, Haass asserted.¹⁶

Th e US-as-empire formulations of Brzezinski, Kissinger and Haass were 
written before 9/11. Th e attacks on New York and Washington were seized 
upon as the “new Pearl Harbor,” by proponents of the Project for a New 
American Century¹⁷ and their allies, who populate George W. Bush’s cabinet. 
Th e Democratic Party has an equivalent group of imperialist thinkers in Th e 
Progressive Policy Institute, which produced a blueprint for maintaining US 
global pre-eminence before the 2000 presidential election. It advocates “the bold 
exercise of American power,” but refrains from language that infl ames opinion 
abroad.¹⁸ Shortly after September 11, Condoleeza Rice, then Bush’s National 

Security Advisor, asked the National Security Council “how do you capitalize 
on these opportunities [i.e. the attacks]?”¹⁹ For the US government, the con-
ditions were seen as favorable for more aggressive US unilateralism, including 
invasions and coup attempts. Th ese actions were justifi ed in the US National 
Security Strategy, already discussed above. Th is doctrine for perpetual war, was 
a much more forthright version of already established US practice. One of the 
Strategy’s “non-negotiable demands,” is to promote “economic freedom beyond 
America’s shores” and assert “respect for private property.” In plain language, the 
US reserves the right to overthrow governments, for example in Venezuela and 
Haiti, which fail to implement US-led, neoliberal capitalism, even if such gov-
ernments receive decisive electoral majorities. In contrast, current anti-imperial-
ist movements emphasize the opposite—the importance of sovereignty and its 
role in realizing the will of the people.

denationalising american elites 

Samuel Huntington, a US establishment thinker, argues that in the US, 
the “central distinction between the public and elites is not isolationism versus 
internationalism, but nationalism versus cosmopolitanism.”²⁰ He argues that 
involvement in globalizing processes varies according to socio-economic status. 
Americans as a whole are becoming more committed to their nation. Not so 
America’s business, professional, intellectual and academic elites, who are not 
likely to be overwhelmed with deep feelings of commitment to their “native land.” 
Despite the reaction to the attacks of September 11, 2001, the denationalizing of 
US elites will continue, he contends.²¹

Huntington outlines three types of transnational strands amongst American 
elites: universalist, economic and moralist. Although he does not say so, these 
are “ideal-types,” which draw distinctions sharply for the purposes of clarifi ca-
tion. In practice, individuals often combine elements of two or more strands. 
Ironically, Huntington’s fi rst example of a transnational approach, universal-
ism, takes American nationalism and American exceptionalism to the extreme. 
Sakamoto perceptively writes that US “isolationism” and “universalistic interven-
tionism” are two sides of the same coin.²² Th e former takes the view, “America by 

¹⁴.  Henry Kissinger, “Globalisation and World Order,” Speech delivered at Trinity 
College, Dublin, Oct. , .

¹⁵.  Haass, Richard. . “Imperial America.” Foreign Aff airs, Nov. , 
http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/views/articles/haass/2000imperial.htm (accessed 
May , ). Haass has moved between the Brookings Institute, the State Department 
and the Council on Foreign Relations.

¹⁶.  While Britain used informal power more than its stereotypical image, it used 
force much more than as a last resort. 

¹⁷.  Th omas Donnelly, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses. Strategy, Forces and 
Resources for a New Century.” Washington: Project for a New American Century, Sept. 
, pp. –.

¹⁸.  John Pilger, New Statesman, Mar. , .

¹⁹.  John Pilger, New Statesman, Dec. , .
²⁰.  Samuel Huntington, “Dead Souls, the Denationalization of the American 

Elite,” National Interest Spring , Issue .
²¹.  Christopher Lash () made a similar argument. 
²².  Sakamoto, Yoshikazu. . “Th e Politics of Terrorism and ‘Civilization’: How 

to Respond As a Human Being,” 
http://www.iwanami.co.jp/jpworld/text/civilization01.html, accessed June , .

http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/views/articles/haass/2000imperial.htm
http://www.iwanami.co.jp/jpworld/text/civilization01.html


Gordon Laxer330 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

prioritising individual sovereignty above that of popular sovereignty would do 
away with democracy, because democracy expresses the collective will of political 
communities, not the individual’s autonomy from democratic collectivities. Th e 
moralist view, Huntington claims, is found amongst “intellectuals, academics and 
journalists.” I call this the cosmopolitan perspective, a strand that is part of the 
tradition of liberal internationalism and has a lot in common with proponents of 
global civil society. I have already discussed these views.

 Advocates of global civil society overgeneralize about the declining power 
of nations and the sovereignty of countries, and frequently imply an equality of 
state power in the international community. But do such rules apply to the most 
powerful state of all—the United States? If American unilateralism is the most 
fl agrant exception to this rule, what purpose is served by frequent assertions 
about national identities peeling away everywhere and states losing their auton-
omy? Perhaps it is that advocates of global civil society cannot credibly hold on to 
their aspirations without forecasting the inevitable withering of all nations and 
states. Whatever the purpose, the eff ect of such distortions is to obscure the real-
ity of US domination. Since 9/11 the US has looked less to multilateral bodies 
than before, and certainly does not treat them as being above US power. 

Th ere are crucial distinctions amongst the imperialist, globalist and cos-
mopolitan perspectives. Th e motivations for holding them diff er. At the risk of 
oversimplifi cation, let me suggest that Imperialists may be motivated primarily 
by ethnocentrism, fear of the “other,” and a desire for domination, Globalists by 
capitalist greed and Cosmopolitans by their abhorrence of racism / intolerance 
and recognition of the sanctity of the individual. Cosmopolitans approach the 
issue from the class sensibility of the frequent traveler who enjoys encounter-
ing unfamiliar places and frequent fl yer lounges (Calhoun 2002: 888). Th ey 
decry all forms of nationalism and want to diminish or end national sovereignty. 
Whatever their motivation, all three strands share in the revolt of elites against 
majorities in the world. In diff erent ways, purposefully or not, each strand justi-
fi es the unilateral power of the US and its new kind of imperialism, and helps 
explain the broad political and electoral support that President Bush enjoyed in 
his fi rst term. 

Typologies are static conceptual frameworks. Th eir real test is how power-
fully they explain the nature of the US imperial power and the current rise of 
anti-imperial nationalisms.

itself is the world” and the latter, “make the world American.” Th e United States 
is seen to be the universal nation because of the triumph and world appeal of 
American society and culture. I call this the imperialist perspective. Governor 
Arnold Schwarzenegger voiced this position well at the 2004 Republican Party 
Convention. “If you believe this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope 
of democracy in the world…then you are a Republican!”²³ Huntington men-
tions no class or interest basis for those who hold this elite perspective, which he 
does for the economic and moralist strands. Let me fi ll in this oversight. Major 
American entertainment corporations, the military, strategic resource indus-
tries—oil and military-related business, are the most prominent actors underpin-
ning the US universalism/imperialism camp. Th e military and related industries 
depend on US government actions and expenditures and may benefi t from US 
unilateralism. When security clashes with liberalized trade, the imperialists tend 
to assert the primacy of security. “Security trumps trade.” White, Christian fun-
damentalists in the US interior and the South provide the strongest electoral 
base for imperialism. 

Th e “economic” is the second transnational approach, held by CEOs of trans-
nationals, Huntington contends. It focuses on economic globalization breaking 
down national boundaries and eroding the authority of national governments. 
I call this the globalism perspective. Globalism is an ideology which asserts the 
historical inevitability of global integration along Washington Consensus or 
neoliberal lines. Such interests depend on foreign investments, trade and US 
multilateralism. Th e “economic approach” has its counterpart amongst sociol-
ogists such as Ulrich Beck, who applaud the way, as he contends, globalizing 
capitalism is wiping out nationality. Beck (2000: 79) wrote approvingly about 
“the cosmopolitan gaze opening wide, empowered by capitalism undermining 
national borders.”

Th e “moralistic” view is Huntington’s third strand of transnationalism 
amongst American elites. It decries patriotism and nationalism as evil forces and 
argues that international law and norms are morally superior to those of individ-
ual nations. Moralists, according to Huntington are highly critical of the concept 
of national sovereignty, national identity and national pride and want them to 
give way to individual sovereignty. Th ey share a universalism with the imperi-
alist camp, but it is less an American-centric universalism.²⁴ Let me add that 

²³.  BBC News, Sept. , , 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3617130.stm, accessed July , .

²⁴.  Often though, US moralists express a humanitarian concern in the language of 
“universalism.” When singers from several countries wrote their own songs for Live Aid, 

expressing genuine concern for famine victims in Ethiopia in , only the US group 
phrased it as “we are the world,” in terms reminiscent of US baseball calling itself the 
“world series.“

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3617130.stm


Gordon Laxer332 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

the new imperialism

Richard Haass argued that the US had to operate an informal empire, rather 
than a formal one “if only because American democracy could not underwrite an 
imperial order that required constant, costly applications of military power.”²⁵ 
Th e great appeal of the US Empire is that it does not look like an empire, but 
maintains indirect rule by infl uencing other states. Th is is also its Achilles heel. 
To gain support at home, US leaders appeal to American nationalism to gain 
support for imperial ventures and they demonise, in muted racist tones, the 
“other” as evil. Th is may work well at home, at least until Americans lose their 
fear and see the mounting American body counts and military costs. But in con-
trast to ancient Rome, which bestowed Roman citizenship on conquered peoples 
and thus prolonged its empire by several hundred years,²⁶ US nationalism does 
not extend beyond the United States. In fact, aggressive expressions of American 
nationalism tend to spark counter-nationalisms such as those in Iraq, Venezuela, 
Canada, Mexico, Nigeria or Saudi Arabia. Aggressive US nationalism also fosters 
counter-regionalisms, as in the European Union or MercoSur, a trading region of 
the southern cone of South America.²⁷

I briefl y look at the nature of America’s contemporary imperialism by exam-
ining the writings of Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin and David Harvey. Each is a lead-
ing proponent of an exciting new critical literature on the “new imperialism” that 
has emerged since September 11. Each writer insists on the importance of politi-
cal, state, and territorial explanations for understanding the new imperialism. 

Canadian Marxists Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (2004) reject major aspects 
of earlier Marxist formulations about the nature of imperialism, including those 
of Lenin and Kautsky, which, they rightly argue, were based on overly econ-
omistic and stagist assumptions of capitalist progress and crises. Gindin makes 
several points.²⁸ First, while the American state represents American capital, its 
own interests demand that it also represent all capital. Th is leads to tensions 
when the two are in contradiction. In our terms, this occurs when imperialist 
interests clash with globalist interests. 

Second, while states, especially those in the core, became distinct centers 
of accumulation, they were also “internationalized” by the American state and 

American capital, as they entered the other states economically, politically, mili-
tarily and culturally.

US capital became internal to their social formations and undermined alle-
giance to “national capital.” It is the internalization of American corporations 
abroad which has prevented the sort of inter-imperial rivalry which led to the 
First World War. Instead, home-grown capital has looked to the American state 
for protection, especially when it invests in the Global South. Th e mission of 
other states came to include responsibility for reproducing at home, the condi-
tions for global capitalism, including treating foreign corporations as if they were 
domestic ones and by supporting and implementing international corporate 
rights agreements. 

Th ird, institutional relationships had been densest between the core and 
their subordinate colonies in the days of formal empires. Th ese weakened and 
now the densest institutional ties shifted to those within core capitalist coun-
tries. Th is change led to convergence within the capitalist core and the continua-
tion, in general, of the qualitative gap with the Global South.

Fourth, “dominant as the US was, it was not omnipotent. Th e American 
state could only rule through other states.” I develop this point further because, 
as Gindin states, it means “the transformation of global capitalism will ultimately 
depend on the transformation of social relations nationally.”²⁹ Th is opens up 
hopeful strategies for social and political transformation because usually, solidar-
ity ties most densely inhere at national and local scales (Imig and Tarrow 1999: 
131, 124; Lahusen 1999: 190). At these scales, solidarity ties are continually formed 
and reformed in myriad ways. Th ey are usually much stronger ties than those 
formed episodically at the transnational level around specifi c campaigns such 
as those against the WTO or for the Kyoto Accord on green house gases. Most 
importantly, citizens movements usually have greater leverage at the national and 
local levels, when a modicum of democracy exists, than at transnational levels.³⁰ 
Governments are more likely to respond to pressures from their own citizens, 
especially before elections, than to the views of foreign citizens. Th e latter, after 
all, can’t vote them out. Th e US goal, according to Gindin, is to turn all other 
countries into eff ective states for global capitalism and to brand those which fail 
to conform, rogue states. US offi  cials see economic nationalisms as their main 
adversaries and try to defeat them through economic and diplomatic pressures. 

²⁵.  Haass, op. cit.
²⁶.  Walden Bello, “Th e Economics of Empire,” New Labor Forum, Jan. , .
²⁷.  Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay established MercoSur in Mar. .
²⁸. Sam Gindin “Sovereignty and Empire,” Canadian Dimension, July/Aug. . 

http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/v37/v37_4sg.htm

²⁹.  Sam Gindin, op. cit., emphasis added.
³⁰.  Th is was evident in the successful campaigns to defeat the MAI (Multilateral 

Agreement on Investment) in  (see Johnston/Laxer :).

http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/v37/v37_4sg.htm


Gordon Laxer334 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

When these fail, the US state tries to ruthlessly suppress them. After the Suez 
crisis of 1956, Panitch and Gindin contend, only the US was allowed to breach 
the sovereignty of other states on its own. 

An additional example is the 2004 coup in Haiti, against President Jean 
Bertrand Aristide, who had been elected in 2000 with over 90 of the vote.³¹ 
Characterized as a “voluntary” abdication of power by US authorities,³² the 
coup was engineered by the United States and backed by France and Canada. 
According to Peter Hallward, Aristide reluctantly accepted  “a series of severe IMF 
structural adjustment plans, to the dismay of the working poor, but he refused 
to acquiesce in the indiscriminate privatization of state resources, and he stuck 
to his guns over wages, education and health.”³³ Th e New York Times probably 
refl ected offi  cial US thinking when they contemptuously characterized Aristide 
as “a left leaning nationalist.”³⁴ Th at label was enough to justify his ouster. 

Gindin and Panitch do not focus on the politics of opposition to the US 
Empire, but they briefl y sketch a counter strategy of seeking “democratic sover-
eignty” and “’de-linking’ from the present order.”³⁵ Since the American empire can 
rule only through other states, its greatest danger, Gindin contends, is that “the 
states within its orbit will be rendered illegitimate by virtue of their articulation 
to the imperium.” In plain language, this means that the appearance of being a 
US puppet undermines the legitimacy of a government with its own citizens. 
Th ere is not “anything like a sense of patriotic attachment to the American state 
amongst the citizenry of other states.” Aggressive US actions often undermine 
the legitimacy of other states when the latter support American projects, Gindin 
argues. 

Opposition will centre on national class struggles, working with anti-corpo-
rate globalization and peace movements, Gindin writes. In this state-centered 
strategy, radical transformations of the state are crucial, so that the state develops 

“our capacities for the deepest democratic participation.”³⁶ Successful national 
struggles depend on others taking up similar struggles in “nationally based inter-
nationalism” and inwardly directed development. Gindin and Panitch see the 
recent US turn to explicit empire as undermining its long-standing appeal of not 
appearing imperialistic. 

Gindin and Panitch make a convincing case for the importance of the state in 
both upholding and undermining the power of the US Empire. Th e only major 
fl aw in their argument, is that they usually equate states with nations, as in the 
overused and problematic formula, the “nation-state.” But popular nationalisms, 
those defi ned from below, do not always coincide with that of central states. Th e 
left nationalisms of Chavez in Venezuela and Aristide in Haiti were popular 
movements and state led. But the left nationalisms, as defi ned from below, of 
several other contemporary cases, such as that of the Zapatistas, English speak-
ing Canada and Quebec, do not coincide with the boundaries of Mexico and 
Canada respectively.

I now turn to the perspective of the critical social geographer, David Harvey 
(2003: 26, 60, 79), before examining several current cases of anti-imperialist 
nationalisms and inter-nationalism from below. Harvey understands the new 
capitalist imperialism of the United States in terms of two dialectics: fi rst, the 
extraction of surpluses through capitalist exploitation of labor versus the extrac-
tion of surpluses by dispossession (displacement, force, fraud, looting etc) or 
what Marx called “primitive accumulation.” Th e second is the dialectical ten-
sion between the territorial logic of state power and the capitalist logic of power 
based on accumulation. In contrast to Marx, who stated that dispossession was 
a necessary stage before the development of capitalism, in severing peasants con-
nections to the land so that they had no choice but to become free wage laborers, 
Harvey argues that capitalists continue to capture a great deal of surplus value 
through dispossession and force.³⁷ Th is is still very important today, along with 
the extraction of surplus value through the exploitation of workers, which Marx 
described so well, but too single-mindedly. 

In today’s terms, accumulation by dispossession entails suppression of 
citizens’ rights to the commons and the commodifi cation of land, labor and 

³¹.  Th e Organization of American States, which tends to be US dominated, char-
acterized the election as unfair, but the International Coalition of Independent Observers 
concluded that “fair and peaceful elections were held.” Aristide claims he was forced out 
by US troops, a claim denied by US offi  cials 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Bertrand_Aristide (accessed Sept. , ).

³².  Wikipedia, “Jean-Bertrand Aristide,” accessed Sept. , . 
http://en.wikipedia.org.

³³.  Peter Hallward, “Why Th ey had to Crush Aristide,” Th e Guardian, Mar. , .
³⁴.  James Petras, “Haitian Tragedy and Imperial Farce,” Canadian Dimension, 

May/June , p..
³⁵.  Quotes in this paragraph: Gindin, op. cit. 

³⁶.  Quotes in this paragraph: Panitch/Gindin (:–).
³⁷.  Marx portrayed primitive accumulation as both original capital and the origin 

of the working class. For his theory of capitalist extraction of surplus value to work, there 
must be capital. Th e original capital must have come from non-capitalist sources, “previ-
ous accumulation,” in Adam Smith’s term. But, Marx discusses primitive accumulation as 
necessary to create a working class more than he does the creation of capital. His mean-
ing is closer to dispossession than to origins of the fi rst capital (Marx : –).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Bertrand_Aristide
http://en.wikipedia.org


Gordon Laxer336 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

But no sooner does Harvey conceptually give power to the people with one 
hand, he takes it away with the other. Th e United States is the real battleground 
where construction of a New Deal in the world and an alternative logic of ter-
ritorial power will take place, Harvey contends. “Th e rest of the world can only 
watch, wait, and hope” (Harvey 2003: 212). Th is is where Harvey goes seriously 
off  the rails. Harvey argues that the only people with power are Americans. Th e 
other 95 of us humans are mere observers, victims of whatever Americans 
decide. Harvey’s argument is the opposite of the Gindin-Panitch perspective, 
which implies that the rest of the world is powerful precisely because the US 
must rule indirectly through other states.

Why does Harvey, the trenchant critic of the new imperialism, end up on 
the same side as his imperial adversaries despite the best of motives? When he 
applies the territorial logic of power to ordinary people, his assumptions lead 
him seriously astray. Harvey (2003: 133) understands very well that imperial-
ism foists “institutional arrangements and conditions upon others, usually in the 
name of universal well-being.” Nevertheless, he joins adversaries of imperialism 
in condemning popular movements for sovereignty from the US Empire because, 
it appears, he rejects all nationalisms, even those which are anti-imperialist. 
Consider the following passage: “Many elements in the middle classes took to 
the defense of territory, nation and tradition as a way to arm themselves against a 
predatory neo-liberal capitalism. Th ey sought to mobilize the territorial logic of 
power to shield themselves from the eff ects of predatory capital.” So far so good, 
but in the next sentence, Harvey joins his adversaries by essentialising all nation-
alisms as necessarily racist and reactionary. “Th e racism and nationalism that had 
once bound nation-state and empire together re-emerged at the petty bourgeois 
and working-class level as a weapon to organize against the cosmopolitanism 
of fi nance capital,” he contended. It appears that Harvey’s cosmopolitanism, his 
“moralistic” transnationalism in Huntington’s terms, lands him in the same camp 
on the issue of sovereignty, democracy and class, as the “universalizing” tenden-
cies of American imperialists and the globalism approach of corporate elites. Th e 
hollowness of Harvey’s advice for the world to rely on the US left to stop US 
imperialism was revealed in the 2004 presidential election. Abandoning their 
spirited struggle from the early 1990s through and past the Battle in Seattle, most 
of the US left, according to James Petras, deserted principle and backed Kerry, a 
warmonger who pledged to put 40,000 more troops in Iraq.³⁸

knowledge. Dispossession tends to rely more on open uses of force, fraud and 
oppression and less on consent than the daily, and hence more hidden and rou-
tine, extraction of surplus value from workers. Th us, Harvey provides a cogent 
theoretical reason why strategies for imperial domination continue in our time, 
despite defying the calculus of pure neoliberal capitalism by creating enormous 
costs for the state which must be paid for by higher taxes or huge government 
defi cits and by awarding contracts to imperial-based corporations rather than 
lowest-cost bidders. Th is point follows the lead of writers such as Samir Amin 
(1974: 3) and Michael Perelman (2000), and may be Harvey’s major contribution 
to current debates about contemporary capitalism and the new imperialism. But 
Harvey’s discussion of the second dialectic, the tension between the logics of ter-
ritory and capitalism, is more relevant to our discussion.

Harvey explains that the territorial dynamic is a political project based on the 
command of territory, and the mobilization of its human and natural resources. 
In contrast, in the capitalist logic of imperialism, the command and use of capital 
takes precedence. Th e two logics frequently clash, and one or other may tem-
porarily gain pre-eminence. Bill Clinton’s most powerful cabinet members were 
in Treasury, and worked closely with Wall Street, Harvey argued. Th e capital-
ist logic was dominant. In our terms, the globalism strand generally prevailed. 
In contrast, the government of Bush the second, has emphasized the territorial 
imperative—with its power base in the Defense Department, the armed forces, 
and the oil and military industries. “Th e American homeland is the planet,” 
declared the 9/11 Commission Report (United States 2004: 362). Th is captures 
in a nutshell the imperial logic of territory. 

Reserving the spoils of the war against Iraq for US corporations such as 
Halliburton and pushing aside pre-existing corporate interests in Iraq, those 
from France, Germany and China, reveals a US regime working for corporations 
based in the US and its allies in Iraq, at the expense of universal capitalist inter-
ests. Such blatant favoritism for corporations based on their national origins, 
undermines American attempts to disguise its territorial imperial ambitions 
in the rhetoric of universality and the conceptual fog of an American “century,” 
rather than an American empire (Harvey 2003: 79). Favoritism and unilater-
alism undermine US leadership at multilateral fora such as the WTO. When 
security and borders “trumped trade” after September 11, 2001, it meant that the 
US imperial strand has been trumping the globalist one. 

Harvey, the geographer, highlights the importance of the state. Despite occa-
sional rhetorical fl ights of fancy from US offi  cials, all states, even the US state, is 
territorially bounded and cannot encompass the world. Along with Panitch and 
Gindin, Harvey puts the political back into political economy and gets us away 
from disempowering and reifi ed discussions about globalization as if they were 
anonymous and agencyless forces which cannot be stopped or changed. 

³⁸.  James Petras, “US Presidential Elections: A View from the Left,” Information 
Clearing House, Oct. , . 
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7165.htm 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7165.htm


Gordon Laxer338 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

imperialism sparks the revival of anti-imperial nationalisms 

George W. Bush has been the best motivator for reviving anti-imperialist 
nationalisms and promoting negative attitudes towards American foreign policy. 
Whenever he opens his mouth or invades more countries, he drives support 
towards national, regional and popular sovereignty abroad. Jorge Castañeda, 
Mexico’s former Foreign Minister, confi rmed this when he wrote that “across 
Latin America, anti-Americanism is on the rise” and that “government parties or 
leaders with a strong anti-US tilt are gaining ground all over the region.”³⁹ Th e 
pro-American Castañeda laments the way “America’s friends in Latin America 
are feeling the fi re of this anti-American wrath.” He places blame squarely on 
the Bush Administration’s folly in Iraq. Th e more subtle proponents of the US 
empire are aware that it is not in their interests to spark sovereignty-seeking 
nationalisms, and their twin, bottom-up democracy abroad.

For a long time, US planners have strategized against the economic national-
ism of other countries, because it threatens to strike against the most vulnerable 
aspect of the American, informal empire, the need to rule through other states. 
If those states signifi cantly disengage from American-led, corporate capitalism, 
the US empire is threatened. At a Western hemispheric conference in 1945, US 
offi  cials decried nationalisms in other countries. In that year, as Chomsky (1999: 
21-23) notes, the US was deeply concerned with the philosophy, which was then 
called “the new nationalism,” which was overspreading the Global South. US 
offi  cials condemned the new nationalism because it operated on the heretical 
principle that the fi rst benefi ciaries of a country’s resources are the people of that 
country rather than US and other foreign investors, and locally-allied elites. Th e 
new nationalism also aimed to “bring about a wider distribution of wealth and 
raise the living standards of the masses.” Despite eff orts to counter its spread, 
anti-imperial nationalists led the movements which successfully decolonized 
most of the Global South from 1947 to the mid 1960s. Most of the decoloniza-
tion was aimed at freedom from control by European powers. But, anti-imperial-
ist nationalists did not stop there. Th ey mobilized the state and people against 
the “new colonialism” of America’s informal empire and that of other Northern 
powers. Th e result was 336 takeovers, or deglobalizations, of transnational cor-
porations around the world in the fi rst half of the 1970s (Stopford et al. 1991: 
121).

Th e rising tide of economic nationalisms scared elites in the US and else-
where in the Global North. In response, some founded a number of neoliberal 
organizations which soon became very infl uential in the Th atcher-Reagan era. 
One of the most prominent of these was the Trilateral Commission, set up in 
1973 by David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and others from transnational 
corporations, banks, government, academia, the media, and conservative labor, to 
create ruling-class partnerships in North America, Western Europe, and Japan 
(Sklar 1980: 2). Th e Trilateral Commission identifi ed an “excess of democracy” 
and “nationalisms” as the two main roadblocks to realizing ruling class aims. Th e 
perspective was very similar two decades later, in 1996, at the height of the US 
neoliberal globalism agenda. Lawrence Summers, Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of 
the Treasury saw that the biggest danger to what he called “Washington’s Bretton 
Woods globalist consensus,” coming from “separatists,” his term for national-
ists.⁴⁰ Five years before September 11, 2001, Summers argued that promoting 
integration around the world under US leadership was America’s deepest secu-
rity interest. Th ose who did not follow the US lead were deemed “separatists,” a 
term which presaged its later cousin, “rogue states.”

It is easy to see why economic nationalisms outside the US have been seen 
by US corporate and government leaders as so dangerous to their interests. Th ey 
threaten both the imperial and globalist strands of US power. Foreign national-
isms can halt US access to strategic resources such as oil. Th ey can also menace 
American corporations guaranteed access to cheap foreign resources and low 
waged labour. Non-American nationalisms also tend to undermine the legiti-
macy of appeals to the universal rights of investors over and above those based 
in the national political community. When economic nationalism combines with 
popular democracy as in Chile under Allende and Venezuela under Chavez, 
citizens’ demands may clash with those of foreign and domestic corporate inves-
tors. 

Richard Haass asserts that immature democracies “are all too prone to 
being captured by nationalist forces.”⁴¹ Th is is why Haass argues that promot-
ing democracy, while laudable, should not be a fundamental goal of US foreign 
policy, “given that other vital interests often must take precedence.” Democracies 
have been established only in Western Europe, North America and Oceania for 
some time, he notes. Haass’ allusion to immature democracies then, can only 
mean those in the Global South and Eastern Europe, areas in which corporate 

³⁹.  Jorge Castañeda, “George W. Bush and America’s Neglected Hemisphere,” 
Project Syndicate, June .

⁴⁰.  Lawrence Summers, “America’s Role in Global Economic Integration,” Treasury 
News, , pp.–.

⁴¹.  Haass, op. cit.



Gordon Laxer340 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

capitalism is, in many places, not very widely supported, and where the US often 
has little compunction about violating national sovereignty. How unfortunate 
then, that David Harvey (2003: 211–212) should conclude his otherwise brilliant 
book with the admonition that “Across-the-board anti-Americanism from the 
rest of the world will not and cannot help.”

cases of left nationalist resistance

On the contrary, what has been called “anti-Americanism” is an important 
component, but only one part, of the much broader phenomena of a system of 
containment of the US Empire and of struggles for sovereignty and democracy. 
Th ese are happening at both the level of states and at the level of citizens’ move-
ments. Th e American failure to get UN Security Council approval to invade Iraq 
resulted not just from the undocumented case for Iraq’s possession of weapons 
of mass destruction, but also because France, Germany and other states were 
determined to reassert a balance of power for what Walden Bello called “the 
defense of national and global security against the American threat.”⁴² As well, 
the anti-corporate globalization movement, the peace movement, various move-
ments for national and popular sovereignty, as well as the Islamist political proj-
ect⁴³ threaten American hegemony in two ways. First, proponents from these 
movements have either taken power in several states or will likely take power and 
boost opposition to US world domination at the level of states. Secondly, both 
progressive and reactionary movements, in their diff erent ways, delegitimize the 
US bid for hegemony. 

Our focus is on the role of popular movements for national and regional 
sovereignty, which, in some places, are also associated with peace movements.⁴⁴ 
Recent movements for sovereignty do not yet appear to be heading for revolu-
tionary class transformation, although several are advancing the cause of social 
democracy and deepening democracy. But such movements have helped weaken 

recent US imperial ambitions on several fronts. First, the US threat to pre-emp-
tively invade and occupy a handful of “rogue states” had been part of US offi  cials 
bravado before invading Iraq. Th e possibility and scope of such invasions became 
less likely afterwards, though by no means impossible. Th e US and its allies have 
far too few troops to eff ectively control the situation in Iraq. Th ey would get even 
more bogged down if they widened their “pre-emptive strike” agenda.

Second, rather than increase the supply of oil to keep world prices low and 
undermine OPEC’s revival, the invasion of Iraq led to major disruptions of 
supply from that country, due to the persistent destruction of pipelines by insur-
gents. Lower supplies from Iraq contributed to the jump in world oil prices in 
2003–2004. 

Th ird, the invasion of Iraq led to a major fracturing of America’s military alli-
ances with NATO partners Germany, France and Canada, as well as with Mexico 
and Chile, key Latin American allies on NAFTA and the FTAA (Free Trade 
Area of the Americas). Th e latter countries sat on the UN Security Council 
in 2003 and each rejected the US–British plan to invade Iraq. A survey in the 
summer of 2004 amongst 35 countries, found that only 19 per cent agreed that 
President Bush’s foreign policy made them feel better about the US, while 53 
agreed it made them feel worse. Respondents feeling most strongly this way were 
in Germany (83), France (81), Mexico (78), China (72) and Canada (71). 
Venezuelans (34 worse–33 better) and Nigerians (34 worse–36 better) 
were divided. Iraqis and Chileans were not surveyed.⁴⁵ Th e survey did not ask 
about the eff ects of the aggressive shift in US foreign policy on respondents’ 
views on global integration under US leadership or desire for greater sovereignty 
for their own country, but election results in several countries demonstrated such 
a relationship. Opposition to the build up of a US-led invasion of Iraq, helped 
swing national elections in 2002 in Germany and South Korea to Presidential 
candidates who opposed aggressive US policies. Two year later, Spaniards threw 
out a government which had put troops into occupied Iraq.

Fourth, American unilateralism also undermined support for the US neo-
liberal agenda at the World Trade Organization and other international fora. 
Th e emergence of the Group of 20 countries, led by Brazil, India, South Africa 
and China, at the Cancun meetings of the WTO in 2003, was the fi rst time in 
over 20 years that there had been a strong and united, independent voice from 
the Global South. It was reminiscent of the relative independence in interna-
tional aff airs of the “non-aligned” movement from the Global South during the 

⁴⁰.  Lawrence Summers, “America’s Role in Global Economic Integration,” Treasury 
News, , pp.–.

⁴¹.  Haass, op. cit.
⁴².  Walden Bello, “Th e Reemergence of Balance of Power Politics,” Focus Web, Oct. , 

. http://www.focuesweb.org/publications/2003/reemergence-of-power-politics.htm
⁴³.  Th e old term was “pan-Islamic.” Th e Islamist political project is to unite all 

Muslims into a single state. It is conceptually anti-nationalist, but ironically has attracted 
mainly Arab nationalists (Dyer : ).

⁴⁴  Yonip. http://www.yonip.com/main/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=416
⁴⁵.  GlobeScan, “Poll of  Countries Finds  Prefer Kerry,  Bush” 

http://www.GlobeScan.com; accessed Sept. , .

http://www.focuesweb.org/publications/2003/reemergence-of-power-politics.htm
http://www.yonip.com/main/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=416
http://www.GlobeScan.com


Gordon Laxer342 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

days of Cold War rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States. It is 
not a coincidence that the group of 20 emerged as a bloc when there was a seri-
ous split between the United States and key allies in Western Europe.⁴⁶ Having 
one very powerful and bullying hegemon does not invite dissent amongst weaker 
countries, but a serious disagreement amongst great powers does. While their 
demands do not fundamentally challenge the tenets of neoliberalism, the Group 
of 20 Southern countries halted the US agenda for the “Washington Consensus” 
at the WTO, and that of America’s sometime ally, the European Union, on terms 
which would have benefi ted the North over those of the South. Th e US cannot 
pursue unilateral interests in military strikes and for US trade protection, and 
at the same time, receive widespread multilateral support on these issues. Th e 
palpable increase in anti-Americanism since the US shifted to a more aggressive 
strategy after September 11, 2001 and positive support for sovereignty at national 
and regional levels helped move several US allies away from support for US 
Empire causes. 

If the American Empire’s greatest vulnerability rests on opposition in other 
states, it is worth briefl y examining competing currents within the chief export-
ers of oil to the US. Th e invasion of Iraq was not only about oil. Certainly, the 
US was determined to use shock and awe after 9/11 to show the world the con-
sequences of opposing Washington. As well, long-standing, economic national-
ist policies in Western Asia had shut out foreign corporations from profi table 
investments in the region. Iraq could act as a demonstration project for priva-
tization and for foreign, particularly American, capital. In addition, an aggres-
sive, pro-Israel faction within Bush’s cabinet wanted to remove Saddam Hussein, 
the most outspoken supporter of the Palestinian struggle among Arab regimes. 
When arguments about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam’s support for 
Al Qaeda, proved false, the American—British justifi cation for invasion shifted 
to promoting democracy, an unlikely primary goal, given the history of US 
actions to install dictators in Iran, Iraq and prop up autocratic Saudi Arabia.

However, oil was undoubtedly a big factor in the invasion. As Linda McQuaig 
shows, Iraq has huge potential for low cost, and therefore exceedingly profi table, 
oil in the range of $15 billion to $50 billion per year (McQuaig 2004: chap. 2). 
Iraq’s oil has been explored very little and has great strategic importance. While 
Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest exporter, its regime is brittle and vulnerable to 
overthrow. Fifteen of the 19 airplane hijackers on September 11, 2001 were Saudis. 

If a regime hostile to the US took control over Saudi oil, it would be very useful 
for the US to have Iraq as a reserve source, controlled largely by US corporations. 
Th e US has long asserted its right to access Middle East oil. In 1980, President 
Jimmy Carter issued a declaration on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, later 
called the “Carter Doctrine.” Going far beyond Afghanistan, Carter declared that 
“an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be 
regarded as an assault on the vital interests of America, and such an assault will 
be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”⁴⁷ While the US 
military was killing many civilians during the invasion of Iraq, and were destined 
to kill many more afterwards, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense, 
invented a novel interpretation of war crimes. Rather than point to civilian casu-
alties from the illegal invasion, Rumsfeld warned Iraqis that setting oil fi elds on 
fi re would be punished as a “war crime” (McQuaig 2004: 6).

In the summer of 2004, the top six suppliers of oil to the US were, in 
descending order, Canada, Saudia Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria and Iraq. 
We briefl y examine the role of nationalism in popular and governmental opposi-
tion to US imperial infl uence and domination in these oil-exporting countries.

Oil and nationalism make a potent, emotive mix because oil is often seen 
as not just another part of the economy, but essential to the “patrimony” of the 
country or region. Th is is especially true in areas which have been subject to 
colonial domination and resource exploitation, with foreign-owned corporations 
receiving sweet-heart deals and draining the areas’ riches. Oil has often been seen 
as a salvation which can lead to an independent, prosperous future.

When President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized the foreign-owned oil com-
panies which dominated the Mexican resource in 1938, it was immensely popular. 
Mexico was the fi rst developing country to takeover an entire industry controlled 
by corporations from the developed world. Timing helped the bold Mexican 
move. Th e impending war with Germany favored non-intervention by the US 
and Britain. 

Mexico’s example inspired economic nationalism in many places. Riding on 
a wave of popular nationalism and anti-colonialism, Muhammad Musaddiq, 
nationalized Iran’s oil industry in 1951. Coming at the height of the Cold War, 
international conditions were unfavorable and Musaddiq’s government was over-
thrown by a US and British supported coup (Cottam 1988). But the mix of oil 
and economic nationalism continued to bubble forth. Although Egypt had little 
oil, Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 and of Mobil and Shell’s oil 

⁴⁶.  Walden Bello, “How Iraq has Worsened Washington’s Strategic Dilemma,” 
Interpress Service, Apr. . ⁴⁷.  State of the Union Address. Jan. , .



Gordon Laxer344 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

interests in Egypt the following year, gave him nationalist credentials throughout 
the Arab world. Th e formation of OPEC in 1960 (Terzian 1985: 1–35), the mas-
sive nationalizations of the oil industry in Western Asia, Venezuela, and even in 
Canada in the 1970s and early 1980s, were all in some way infl uenced by Mexico’s 
example. 

Most oil nationalisms of the 1970s were eff ective, popular mobilizations to 
elicit sacrifi ce for the common good. But in all the cases referred to above, oil 
nationalisms were top-down, state-led aff airs, even if they were backed by popu-
lar support. Activist states were part of mainstream thinking in that “Keynesian,” 
post-colonial era. Th e issue now is whether, after 25 years of neoliberal domi-
nance, current nationalisms around oil, or more broadly, nationalisms in oil 
exporting countries, are state-led, elitist projects, or whether they are initiated 
by popular democratic mobilization. Th ere is no reason to assume that these are 
top-down nationalist projects. Nationalisms have a wonderful, chameleon abil-
ity to change colors because competing versions tend to serve distinct interests 
and adopt diff erent nuances according to the class that poses it and the moments 
in which it is posed.⁴⁸ In the past quarter century, elites in most countries have 
publicly embraced neoliberalism and globalization, explicitly rejecting national-
ism. Th us today’s nationalisms tend to come from below.

Current cases of nationalism in oil-exporting countries represent a spectrum 
on the continuum from core to periphery. Th ey cross several cultural divides, 
represent varying levels of popular political infl uence and display varying levels 
of state autonomy and capacity. Iraq resembles, at least temporarily, the old 
imperialism of direct occupation. Venezuela is an example of the new imperial-
ism, in which, rather than invade, the US backed an unsuccessful coup in April 
2002, orchestrated by Venezuela’s elites. Mexico is a tough case for guaranteed 
American access to oil. Mexican control, embodied in Pemex, the publicly-owned 
company, is a cherished part of Mexican nationalism. Attempts to privatize it or 
parts of it, have met with popular mobilizations and failed so far. 

Iraq presents the strongest immediate challenge to the US Empire, where all 
of the latter’s stated objectives except one, have failed. Th e one US success is the 
overthrow and jailing of Saddam. But, as Immanuel Wallerstein argues, the US 
has been defeated on all other objectives.⁴⁹ Th ese include the following. Th e US 
goal of controlling the world’s oil has been set back by continual insurgent attacks 
which rupture the pipelines. Rather than limit the ability of “Islamic terrorists” 

to attack the US, the invasion allows them to use Iraq as a base and polls show, 
has increased popular sympathies with the Islamist political project in Muslim 
countries.⁵⁰ Saddam had refused to allow Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists 
to operate out of Iraq. Th e US has failed to create a stable, pro-American gov-
ernment in Iraq, and provide a shining example of democracy to help it spread 
regionally. Rather than making friends, the occupation has badly cut support 
for US policies in Western Asia. Finally, rather than boost the credibility of US 
power to act as a deterrent elsewhere, “it is hard to be awesome when the great 
US armed forces are held in check by a popular resistance in Iraq,” as Wallerstein 
puts it. 

Th e occupation of Iraq, did something, at least temporarily, which hundreds 
of years of co-habitation had not. It united Shiites and Sunnis in a common 
quest to expel the invader, in a war of national liberation, as John Pilger put it.⁵¹ 
Th at is a very apt term, which almost disappeared from use during the recent 
period when globalization myths reigned supreme. W. Andrew Terrill, professor 
at the (US) Army War College, echoed this view when he stated that “most Iraqis 
consider us occupiers, not liberators.” ⁵² Iraq’s liberation movement appears to be 
led by Islamic traditionalists, who are anything but democratic. It is not led by a 
Gandhi or Mandela, a major reason it is dismissed by Western progressives. But 
that does not mean that the international community should oppose self-rule by 
Iraqis.

For decades, Saudi Arabia has been the key supplier of oil in Western Asia 
and the regime’s current instability greatly worries US authorities. Saudi poli-
tics are largely invisible to outside observers. Offi  cial policies are set by internal 
politics within the royal House of Saud and in their interaction with insurgent 
opponents. Its supply of very cheap oil has been so immense, that it can readily 
increase or decrease exports and help stabilize the world price. Saudi Arabia has 
long been the United States strongest Arab ally. Th e understanding between the 
two parties, has been plentiful exports of low-priced, Saudi oil and an undermin-
ing of OPEC, in return for US non-interference in Saudi Arabia’s brutal dictator-
ship. Th is understanding started to unravel after the attacks on the twin towers 

⁴⁸.  Pierre Vilar, “On Nations and Nationalism,” Marxist Perspectives (): .
⁴⁹.  Immanuel Wallerstein, “What has the U.S. Achieved in Iraq?,” Commentary 

, Sept. , . http://fbc.binghamton.edu/145en.htm

⁵⁰.  Pew Research Center, . “A Year After Iraq War. Mistrust of America in 
Europe Ever Higher, Muslim Anger Persists,” http://www.people-press.org, accessed 
June , .

⁵¹.  John Pilger, “Iraq is a War of National Liberation,” Th e New Statesman, Apr. , 
.

⁵².  Sidney Blumenthal, “Far Graver than Vietnam,“Th e Guardian, Sept. , .

http://fbc.binghamton.edu/145en.htm
http://www.people-press.org


Gordon Laxer346 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

in New York, carried out mainly by Saudi insurgents. Th ese insurgents appear to 
be motivated by the twin forces of the Islamists and Saudi nationalism.

Venezuela has spearheaded oil independence in the Global South. In 1960, 
Venezuela initiated the formation of OPEC (Th e Organization of Petroleum 
Exporting Countries), and President Hugo Chavez campaigned eff ectively to 
revive OPEC in 2000. Th e US failure in Iraq contributed to the US failure at 
“regime change” in Venezuela. High world oil prices, in part caused by reduced 
exports of oil from Iraq after the invasion, helped Hugo Chavez, the fi ery left-
nationalist President, win a presidential referendum in Venezuela in August 
2004. Revenues from high prices allowed Chavez to balance internal class forces 
by maintaining payments to foreign creditors, subsidies and low-interest loans 
to local capitalists, while redistributing much of the huge oil rents to the poor.⁵³ 
Many other internal factors were involved in Chavez’ victory, including his suc-
cessful campaign in 2002–3 to wrest control of the state-owned oil company from 
the elites, who had insulated its revenues from state coff ers. Chavez‘s popularity 
combines an appeal to workers, the working poor and the dark skinned, with 
appeals to national sovereignty and South American autonomy from US domi-
nation, and a moral, middle-class style crusade against corruption.⁵⁴ Venezuela 
displays a potent combination of state-led, left nationalism with massive mobili-
zation from below in support. 

Canada is the only developed country amongst the US’ major suppliers of 
oil and is currently America’s greatest foreign source for both oil and natural gas. 
Controlling oil in a developed country calls for more subtle means than coup 
attempts. US domination over Canadian oil was threatened in the 1970s and 
early 1980s, when Canada boldly asserted oil independence. Exports of Western 
Canadian crude were reduced to the United States and diverted to Eastern 
Canada, which had previously relied on imports. Th e Canadian price was below 
the world price, but exports to the US were priced at world levels. Canada set up 
PetroCanada, a government-owned entity partly modeled after Pemex, which 
bought several large, foreign-owned corporations. Th e Canadianization of the 
foreign owned oil industry, coincided with oil nationalism in many OPEC 
countries and was immensely popular at fi rst, backed by an astonishing 84 of 
Canadians in 1981 (Doern and Toner 1985: 107). Th e Canadian independence 

initiative was reversed in the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) of 1989, 
which mandated that while the agreement was in place, Canada must export its 
current proportion of oil to the US even in the event of shortages in Canada. Th e 
so-called free trade agreement, the pioneer neoliberal corporate rights agreement 
upon which NAFTA and the WTO were modelled, removed barriers to foreign 
ownership and control over energy and removed price diff erentials between oil 
for Canadian and US markets. Mexico refused such an oil sharing agreement 
when it signed NAFTA in 1994.

While oil nationalism in Canada is currently quiescent because of popu-
lar assumptions about NAFTA inevitably continuing, Canadian nationalism 
directed at independence vis-à-vis the United States, has continually bubbled 
up from below. Th e main issues have been around defense of public, not-for-
profi t, services such as universal health care and around non-participation in US 
military adventures abroad. Opponents of for-profi t health care use the terms 
“privatization” and “Americanization of health care” interchangeably. An example 
occurred during protests in May 2000 at the Alberta Legislature against a bill 
which allowed private, for-profi t hospitals. Several thousand people gathered 
nightly to make noise, so that legislators could hear the protests. Th e crowds 
periodically broke into singing “O Canada.” When the national anthem is sung 
as a protest song against elite schemes, it is clear that this is nationalism from 
below.

Popular opinion and street demonstrations in Canada also manifested them-
selves around not joining the US “coalition of the willing” in invading Iraq. Th e 
US could not persuade either of its NAFTA partners to back its plans for Iraq. 
Popular opposition in Canada and Mexico helped nudge their respective govern-
ments into distancing themselves from the US imperial agenda. Subsequently, 
the decisions of their respective governments to stay out of Iraq were very popu-
lar and part of national pride in their respective countries. Such opposition could 
be characterized as nationalist or as internationalist. In fact, it seems to have 
been a combination of both. 

nationalisms, inter-nationalism and democracy

Nationalism has such a variety of meanings and a history of association with 
most kinds of politics that it is facile to be categorically for or against “it.” Th ere is 
no it. Th ere are only them. Despite its nominal form, “nationalism” is not an “ism” 
like socialism or liberalism. It has no set of theoretically coherent propositions, 
nor a universal vision, a major reason intellectuals treat it so condescendingly 
(Anderson 1991: 14). Nationalisms associated with the political right are often 
profoundly racist, exclusionary, authoritarian and expansionist, while many 

⁵³.  Gregory Wilpert, “A Historic Date for Venezuela, Latin America and the Left,” 
ZNet, Sept. , .

⁵⁴.  James Petras, “President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities,” 
Rebelión. Aug. ,  http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=4135.

http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=4135


Gordon Laxer348 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

left, inter-nationalist nationalisms seek the deep democratic transformation of 
global corporate capitalism through close ties to anti-imperial, socialist, feminist, 
ecological, anti-racist and union movements. Rather than generating their own 
content, all nationalisms get most of their ideology from the friends they keep 
(Lloyd 1995).

Exclusivist nationalisms, I argue, are best counteracted, not through dis-
engaged cosmopolitanism and abstractions called global civil society or world 
society, but through positive, inter-nationalist nationalisms. By positive nation-
alisms, I do not mean the civic nationalisms of the French and American revo-
lutions. Positive, inter-nationalist nationalisms come closest to inclusiveness, 
embracing deep diversity including solid recognition of the rights of minority 
nations within the country, being substantively democratic, refraining from 
expansionism and supporting inter-nationalism from below, in the people-to-
people sense of the socialist internationalist tradition (for a fuller discussion see 
Laxer 2001: 15). Th e main struggles in each nation and country involve turning 
corporate-oriented, pro-empire states into citizen-oriented, anti-imperial states 
and to support the popular sovereignty of theirs and all other nations. As Sam 
Gindin argues, “those of us outside the US state cannot infl uence the American 
state directly. We can only act to delegitimate our own states when they support 
the American state. Our opposition to the sovereignty of the American state is 
therefore expressed by directly challenging the integration of our own state with 
the American empire.”⁵⁵

If capital is increasingly mobile across borders, labor is not. International 
migration has never come close to equaling, in relative terms, the “great migration” 
from Europe from the 1880s to 1914 (World Bank 2002: 10–11). Labor mobility 
is a basic characteristic of capitalism and much of it has been forced: indentured 
workers, slaves, prison labor, and political and economic refugees. People more 
readily emigrate to reunite with family already abroad, but most wage earners, 
peasants and those involved in unpaid work do not want to permanently leave 
their nation or country of origin, if, (and this is a big “if ”), home is safe, demo-
cratic and provides decent work. Home and community have a defi nite place, 
cherished in non-market attachments.

Democracies are rooted in such territorial communities, cultures of par-
ticularity and commonwealths of immobile wage-earners, peasants and women 
doing unpaid, socially reproductive work. Bottom-up democracy is contingent 
on vibrant communities where solidarity links were formed and common memo-

ries were forged through citizens’ struggles and gains against specifi c imperial, 
national and local power structures. Developing social solidarity ties through 
real life struggles that are independent of states and the power of transnational 
corporations are essential to the democratic practices of citizens over rulers. So 
are anti-racism and international ties of social movements. But democracies need 
a high degree of cohesion and sense of mutual commitment. As Benjamin Barber 
(1995: 278) argues: “democracies are built slowly, culture by culture, each with its 
own strengths and needs, over centuries.” Th ey have succeeded only in vibrant 
communities where there are common memories of citizens’ struggles and gains 
against local power structures.

no democracy without sovereignty

Th e issues of nationalism and democracy bring us back to the scepticism 
expressed at the beginning of the paper about the goal of creating a “global civil 
society” or “world society” in the age of the US Empire. I have made the case for 
alternatives, those of progressive inter-nationalist nationalisms, as current means 
to mobilize citizens against the US Empire and to deepen popular sovereignty. 
I have tried to show that such inter-nationalist nationalisms are re-emerging, 
within many countries, especially those which are most exposed to US domina-
tion. 

In Europe and imperial countries, the discourse about nationalisms tends to 
be very negative for understandable reasons. Th e EU acts as a shield, blocking 
direct US domination of member states and diminishing the need to struggle 
for sovereignty against an outside empire. Th en there is the Nazi past and the 
current threats from racist right movements and parties, which are designated 
as nationalist. Current nationalisms in imperial powers, such as those in the US 
and Britain, are rightly associated with domination, reaction and prejudice. It is 
within these contexts, that all nationalisms and even national sovereignty, are 
opposed in principle. Anti-EU movements such as those in Norway and Sweden, 
which work for greater national sovereignty, are often led predominantly by left, 
internationalist forces. But they avoid the nationalist label. 

What is the eff ect of transposing such negative and overgeneralized under-
standings to nationalist movements in other parts of the world? It means oppos-
ing the ability of often the most eff ective, and rooted political communities to 
democratically determine their collective lives. It means undercutting the most 
eff ective opposition to unilateral rule by the US Empire. In their drive to over-
come racism and prejudice, cosmopolitans overlook or undervalue the demo-
cratic implications of gutting popular sovereignty. Such sovereignty movements 
must link up, promote mutual understanding, radically redistribute the world’s ⁵⁵.  Gindin, op. cit. 



Gordon Laxer350 Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire 

wealth, address global environmental challenges like climate change, and end 
racism in all its forms. But, it is naive to think that a united global civil-society 
of six billion people can act in concert to control the power of corporations or 
contain imperial America.

Talk about “globalization from below” is misleading. Ordinary people cannot 
be organized and coordinated globally the way elites who meet at Davos and 
Bilderberg can. Nor would it be desirable. Th e future world many of us want is 
one of great, cultural and national diversities, in which distinct peoples, on a scale 
much smaller than all humanity, have the sovereignty to decide their own futures. 
Deep, inclusive democracies and equality are the goals, national and popular sov-
ereignties are necessary means.

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