Ballots or Bullets: Democracy and World Power

Click here to access article by James Petras from his website.

Petras provides this introduction to his essay in a PDF format.

The principal reason why Washington engages in military wars, sanctions and clandestine operations to secure power abroad is because its chosen clients cannot and do not win free and open elections.

A brief survey of recent election outcomes testify to the electoral unattractiveness of Washington backed clients. The majority of democratic electorates rejects candidates and parties which back the US global agenda: neo-liberal economic policies; a highly militarized foreign policy; Israeli colonization and annexation of Palestine; the concentration of wealth in the financial sector; the military escalation against China and Russia. While the US policy attempts to re-impose the pillage and dominance of the 1990’s via recycled client regimes the democratic electorates want to move on toward less bellicose, more inclusive governments, which restore labor and welfare rights.

The core reality which I think escapes the professor is that this compulsion to world dominance is an inherent characteristic of advanced capitalist societies. The earlier stages of capitalist development required elements of social democracy and democratic forms in order to preserve their legitimacy; however in this advanced stage which all capitalist countries strive to achieve, they find such liberal features to be a hindrance to their quest for control on a global scale of all resources and labor which their system of exploitation ultimately requires. Social democracy and elements of democracy such as elections and representative governments have always been only a temporary expedient to capitalist rulers.

In the drive for world power, no crime is left undone; no democracy that opposes it is
 tolerated. Countries as small and marginal as Honduran or Somalia or as great and powerful as Russia and China cannot escape the wrath and covert destabilization efforts of the White House.

The quest for world domination is driven by the subjective belief in the “triumph of the
 will”.

This last sentence gives his position away. By reference to Nazi Germany and their propaganda about the “triumph of the will”, he is suggesting that the current Fourth Reich's quest for dominance is merely another historical aberration. I don't think that Petras realizes that the capitalist drive for world domination is its ultimate destiny.