NETWORKS OF US CAPITALIST CLASS POWER AND

POST-COLD WAR GRAND STRATEGY:

THE EVOLUTION OF US IMPERIALISM FROM CLINTON
TO OBAMA

Bastiaan van Apeldoorn & Naná de Graaff

VU University Amsterdam
Department of Political Science
De Boelelaan 1081
1081 HV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
E-mail: e.b.van.apeldoorn@vu.nl
n.a.de.graaff@vu.nl
http://www.arcipe.eu

First very preliminary draft. Please do not cite without permission

Paper to be presented at the SGIR 7th Pan-European International Relations

Conference(Standing Group International Relations of the European Consortium of Political
Science), Stockholm, Section 11 ‗The Return of the State? Global Capitalism and Geopolitics
after the Crisis of Neoliberalism‘, 9-11 September, 2010.
INTRODUCTION

With the ‗war on terror‘ about to enter its tenth year and showing no sign yet of abating, the name
‗long war‘ coined by neoconservatives under Bush Jr. seems to be rather apt indeed. At the same time,
the world has experienced, and is still experiencing, the worst financial and economic crisis since the
1930s. Renewed fears of a ‗double dip‘ in the US are underlining that this crisis is indeed one that has
above all struck in the ‗heartland‘ (Gowan 2009) and has dealt another big blow to US hegemony that
according to many was already weakening if not in terminal decline (Arrighi 2005). The tectonic
plates of global power seem to shifting with especially the seemingly unstoppable rise of China
leading more and more pundits to predict the ‗end of the West‘(Jacques 2008). For sure, long gone
seem to be the heady days of the 1990s when, after the end of the Cold War US primacy was
unquestioned and nothing seemed to stand in the way of a peaceful remaking of the world in the US
neoliberal image. With no ‗enemies‘ left, the forces of globalisation could reign freely with the US
sitting comfortably on top. That comfort has long gone. Yet, the US remains not only the largest
economy but also the only military superpower, spending about as much as the rest of the world put
together (see Ikenberry et al 2009).
Within the changing world order then, the US remains key, and the geopolitical strategy that it
pursues will not only reflect the changing structural context but also to a large extent continue to shape
its future. The study of US foreign policy, or more specifically what is called grand strategy, thus
remains critical to an understanding of the current and future world order. Grand strategy here can be
seen as the ‗highest‘ level of foreign policy representing a comprehensive vision of the state‘s critical
‗interests‘ and how best to promote and achieve them, and thus about the state‘s role and position in
the world (Layne 2006: 13).1 As the contrast with the 1990s indicates, US grand strategy appears to
have undergone important shifts in the past decades. It was in particular when the current ‗war on
terror‘ was initiated by the Bush administration that this became a much debated issue. With Obama
having been elected on the promise of ‗change‘, this again also raised expectations regarding a new
post-Bush foreign policy. Yet as an increasing number of commentators have argued, Obama‘s foreign
policy – like that of Bush before him – also shows remarkable continuities with the recent and more
distant past.
Although the theme of ‗continuity and change‘ in US grand strategy is since the end of the Cold
War much discussed both in the media and amongst academics, there is, as we shall argue below, in
fact little in the way of systematic and comprehensive explanations of either the observed variations of

1
The term ‗grand strategy‘ should not be taken to imply that foreign policy across the board always forms a
coherent whole, or that there are never inconsistencies between or within certain issue areas. Nor should it be
taken to mean, that, even with a clear overall strategy in place, there are no conflicts within the administration
over particular issues and the direction policy should take. Nor does a ‗grand strategy‘ have to be successful (in
the longer run) in order to be worthy of the name. Grand strategies may sometimes grandiosely fail, even in their
own terms, after which adjustments will have to be made.
2
US grand strategy or the underlying continuities. Whereas the predictions of the parsimonious and
rationalist theories of neo-realism and neoliberalism do not match the observed behaviour, most
analysts do not go much beyond constructing ad hoc hypotheses to explain these ‗deviations‘.
Although theories like neo-classical realism and (liberal) constructivism do go beyond the rational
actor model and open the black box of the national state, they lack an adequate conception of state-
society relations to actually make sense of the so-called domestic forces shaping US foreign policy.
Explaining US grand strategy, we argue, requires us to radically break with the realist abstraction of
the state from society, and analyse the social content and social origins of geopolitical strategy. To this
end we adopt a historical materialist perspective that seeks to uncover these social origins by analysing
to what extent and how those actors that formulate and implement US grand strategy are related to
dominant social (class) forces within US civil society. In particular, we will focus upon class and class
agency as the causal nexus between the process of capital accumulation and concomitant interests on
the one hand and the geopolitical interests and strategies of the state on the other. Linking structure to
agency the premise here is that ‗state managers‘ in their practices are shaped by the social positions
that they occupy in virtue of these networks and that in this way their own agency can become an
expression of a broader class agency, that is, of a project to reproduce class hegemony.
The main argument that this paper will put forward is that the variations and continuities of post-
Cold War US grand strategy can be explained in terms of underlying hegemonic capitalist class
interests, reflecting different attempts to secure the long-term interests of the US ruling class in the
realm of foreign policy. The continuities here can be explained in terms of the overall ideology and
interests of the leading sections of US capital – which since the turn of the last century has been very
international in its outlook – and the way in which these have been able to shape US grand strategy.
This has resulted in a strategy premised on what the radical historian William Appleman Williams
(2009) has dubbed the world view of the ‗Open Door‘: that is the particular US brand of imperialism
oriented towards establishing global hegemony through creating and maintaining an ‗open‘ liberal
world order. We argue that although the basic tenets of this overarching US grand strategy have
remained the same, this strategy since the end of the Cold War (though arguably also before) has also
shown variation in terms of the particular shape it has taken. The persistence of what we will call US
Open Door imperialism is not to be taken for granted. Indeed, our argument is that it takes serious
effort on the part of key actors – foreign policy makers, strategists and intellectuals – to ensure its
reproduction. But as structures (in this case a set of ideas and concomitant practices underpinning US
foreign policy) are reproduced, they can also be transformed (Bhaskar 1979). Within different
circumstances different actor networks may come to somewhat different interpretations of US
interests, not so much regarding the overall goals of the strategy but regarding some of the means to
achieve these.

3
 In order, then, to examine the continuities and changes within US grand strategy since the end of
the Cold War this paper offers a comparative analysis of the Clinton, Bush and the current Obama
administrations, their grand strategies and the class networks underlying and shaping their geopolitical
agency. The paper is thus organised as follows. In the first section we will first review some of the
dominant conventional approaches to analysing US grand strategy. We will conclude that although in
particular neo-classical realism does succeed in going beyond the rational unitary actor model, it lacks
a theory to make sense of the state-society relations that it suggests are critical in explaining grand
strategy formation. It is thus that we will propose a historical materialist approach that argues that we
need to see the political agency of state managers formulating grand strategy in relation to dominant
social forces in US capitalist society, and in particular analyse how grand strategy is shaped by class
interests. In the second section we will analyse both the continuities and the changes in US grand
strategy in the post-Cold War era through the interpretative framework of the Open Door. Here we
will argue that the grand strategies pursued by the three last administrations can be seen as variations
of Open Door imperialism: displaying a strong continuity while each also representing a different
ordering and articulations of ends and means. These differences we interpret in terms of different
strategies of the US ruling class to reproduce its hegemony – so-called ‗hegemonic projects‘. It is thus
that we seek to link grand strategy to class strategy and underlying capitalist interests. In order to
empirically substantiate how this link materialises in the formation of US grand strategy, the third
section will analyse and compare the networks of capitalist class power underpinning each of the three
administrations. The findings show that indeed many of the ‗grand strategy-makers‘ of each
administration have close corporate ties, in particular to those sectors that we can associate with the
internationalist outlook of the Open Door. This then reveals the class origins of US grand strategy. Our
analysis, however, also shows that the observed shifts in this strategy should not so much be explained
in terms of different corporate / capitalist class interests per se but should be more seen as due to
political and ideological differences within the same set of interests.

THEORISING GRAND STRATEGY: TOWARDS A HISTORICAL MATERIALIST

PERSPECTIVE

In this section we offer a critical review of the literature on US grand strategy since the end of the
Cold War and argue that even where this literature opens up the proverbial black box of the US state
to examine so-called ‗domestic variables‘ it fails to see the inner connections between US geopolitical
strategy and wider socio-economic structures and concomitant social forces. For this, we argue, we
need to adopt a historical materialist perspective in which class agency becomes the key explanans.

4
The failure of so-called systemic explanations

The question of change within US grand strategy has become the object of much academic debate
especially with the Bush administration and the policies it adopted in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks. Given the amount of literature that what has been viewed as a significant shift of US grand
strategy has spawned, the absence within this literature of any attempt to explain this turn from
conventional ‗systemic‘ IR theories, that is, neo-realism and neoliberalism, is all the more
conspicuous. The reason for this absence is that, by their own admission, both neo-realists and
neoliberals are unable to explain this shift, or more generally any variations in / of US grand strategy
since the end of the Cold War (cf. Dueck 2004, Skidmore 2005). Nor are they in fact able to account
for its important underlying continuities. Focusing on ‗systemic‘ variables (i.e. an anarchic system in
which states seek to maximise relative respectively absolute gains), neo-realism in particular tends to
be at a loss in explaining changes since the end of the Cold War inasmuch as a) the end of bipolarity is
seen as the major systemic change (not followed by others that could account for subsequent shifts in
US grand strategy), and b) this change would dictate a rather different foreign policy behaviour of the
US than we in fact have observed. Thus, among realists there is a strong consensus that the rational
strategy for the US would be that of ‗offshore balancing‘ (Layne, 2006, 2009, also Mearsheimer
2001). Contradicting the predictions of the model, however, especially the Bush II administration has
been accused of pursuing a strategy of what the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy (in a
manifesto signed by prominent neo-realists such as Waltz, Walt and Mearsheimer) has interpreted as a
dangerous ‗move towards empire‘, which will engender ‗multiple balances of power against us‘
(CRFP 2007; see also Schmidt and Williams 2008). From a (neo-) liberal perspective, focusing on the
systemic effects of globalisation and interdependence, the ‗neoconservative‘ shift under Bush has
similarly been treated as an anomaly defying rational logic (e.g., Ikenberry 2004a, 2004b).
The only example of an explicit attempt to explain variations in post- cold war US strategy on
the basis of systemic factors, is provided by Miller, who argues that the variables ‗distribution of
power‘ and ‗degree of external threat‘ act as ‗the selector‘ of pre-existing sets of ideas or ideal-typical
grand strategies (Miller 2010: 29).2 Here Miller distinguishes between (defensive and offensive)
‗realist‘ strategies aimed at affecting the balance of power and (defensive and offensive) and ‗liberal‘
strategies aimed at ‗ideology promotion‘, i.e., democracy and free markets (ibid.: 32). Apart from the
in our view untenable distinction between realist power politics and liberal idealism – or rather
Miller‘s failure to recognise that the latter is also about promoting and exercising US power (cf. Layne
2006) – the problem with this variety of systemic theory is that it takes as given that what needs to be

2
Miller himself suggests that his approach may be seen as belonging to neoclassical realism (which I will
discuss in the next section) because of its integration of ‗systemic-material‘ and ‗domestic-ideational‘ variables
(Miller 2010: 29, fn. 4). However the latter, and in contrast to most neoclassical realist work that takes these also
as key explanatory variables, are taken by Miller as dependent variables only or at the most as intervening
variables (ibid. 29-30).
5
explained in any comprehensive account of US grand strategy-making. Thus Miller distinguishes four
main US grand strategies which according to him have - always?- been present in the US foreign
policy community (Miller 2010: 29). The origins of any of these four types are left unexplained,
however, nor is the question answered of why it is these four strategies rather than any other
(conceivable) strategy. Finally, by arguing that which of the four strategies is selected is dependent
only on external stimuli, we stay within the confines of the neo-realist billiard- ball model.

Non-systemic accounts: constructivism and neoclassical realism

One attempt to open the black box in order to account for variations in post- cold war US grand
strategy, and thus move beyond ‗systemic variables‘, is provided by constructivist explanations (e.g.
Dueck 2004, Schonberg 2006). Dueck, for instance, has argued that given the fact that neither neo-
realism nor neoliberalism, and their (international) structural variables, can account for what he sees as
post 9/11 shift towards a US ‗grand strategy‘ of ‗primacy‘, the explanation rather has to be the
‗[p]romotion and selection of particular [neoconservative] ideas (…) – especially on the part of
leading defense and foreign policy officials‘ (2004: 535). We fully concur that ideas have to play a
central role in any convincing account of the neoconservative shift but the problem with reducing it to
the realm of ideas is that how and why certain ideas rather than others were ‗promoted‘ and ‗selected‘
remains unexplained.
Within the literature, neoclassical realism stands out as the most elaborate attempt to introduce
so-called unit-level variables, including the role of ideas, while also holding on to the importance of
the international system (Rose 1998; Rathburn 2008). One of the most sophisticated and insightful
analyses of US grand strategy from this perspective is that of Christopher Layne (2006) who forcefully
argues how next to systemic variables, US grand strategy since 1940 and up to the present period, has
been driven by the aforementioned ideology of the Open Door, which has made the US pursue a
strategy of ‗extra-regional hegemony‘ (rather than the aforementioned ‗offshore balancing‘). Although
we share Layne‘s characterisation of the fundamental and unchanging overarching objectives of US
grand strategy (see below), we argue that because of his continuing commitment to a realist state-
centric paradigm in which the state is abstracted from society, Layne is unable to provide a deeper
explanation of what he himself identifies as the driving forces of US strategy. Layne may succeed in
explaining that the US has sought global hegemony because of the Open Door world view of its
policy-makers, but he does not explain why the latter has become so dominant (or indeed, hegemonic),
that is, why US policy-makers have consistently since 1940 come to define US are these interests
specified beyond observing (correctly) that US policy-makers – consistent with Open Door ideology –
‗believed that America‘s prosperity was tied to its access to export markets‘ (ibid.: 72, his emphasis).

6
 Needless to say Layne‘s analysis begs the question of why US policy-makers came to this belief,
especially given that according to Layne it led them to adopt an ‗irrational‘ strategy that tends to
undermine US national security (ibid.: 134-58). Layne himself gives the answer towards the very end
of his book: US policy-makers were not ‗foolish‘ but stayed the course of global hegemony ‗because
that grand strategy has served the interests of the dominant elites that have formed the core of the U.S.
foreign policy establishment since at least the 1930s‘ (ibid.: 200-1). At the core of the elite coalition
we find, so claims Layne, ‗large capital-intensive corporations that looked to overseas markets and
outward-looking investment banks‘ (ibid.). This very insightful conclusion, however, does not as such
follow from Layne‘s own analysis which until the very end is in fact silent on the role of these elites
and their corporate interests. In the end Layne‘s analysis states at the surface of the US state and its
personnel, without probing any deeper into US state-society relations.
What is an unsubstantiated conclusion at the end of Layne‘s analysis is in fact a starting point for
ours. That is we seek to uncover the social, and in particular class, origins of state power and of, in this
case, geopolitical strategy. We will thus below elaborate our own historical materialist approach to US
grand strategy formation.

Class strategy, hegemonic projects and grand strategy

In this paper we argue that variations in US grand strategy can only be made sense of when
geopolitical strategies are seen as internally related to the social relations and practices constituting
global capitalism (see, e.g., Rupert 1993; Wood 2003; Van Apeldoorn forthcoming; cf. Harvey 2003;
Callinicos 2007, 2009). Building upon work done within IPE on transnational class formation (Van
der Pijl 1998; Van Apeldoorn 2004), class here is seen as the critical causal nexus connecting
geopolitical strategy formation to the structures of (global) capitalist accumulation.
We therefore need to integrate both structure and agency in our account of capitalist class rule,
which we will do through the neo-Gramscian concept of hegemonic project. Following Gramsci
(1971), Jessop (1990: 208) refers to a successful hegemonic project as involving ‗the mobilization of
support behind a concrete, national-popular program of action which asserts a general interest in the
pursuit of objectives that explicitly or implicitly advance the long-term interests of the hegemonic
class (fraction)‘. It is thus that a successful hegemonic project in the longer run will have to be linked
to a successful accumulation strategy, that is, a strategy for the realisation of ‗a specific ―growth
model‖ complete with its various extra-economic preconditions‘ (Ibid.: 198). The rise of a new
hegemonic project, however, does not necessarily have to coincide with the rise of a new accumulation
strategy (Ibid.: 346). As Jessop points out, it is important to see that while ‗they may overlap partially
and / or mutually condition each other, accumulation strategy and hegemonic project are not identical:

7
 While accumulation strategies are directly concerned with economic expansion on a national or
international scale, hegemonic projects can be concerned principally with various non-economic
objectives (even if economically conditioned and economically relevant). The latter might
include military success, social reform, political stability or moral regeneration (ibid.: 208).

In the short run, then, given ‗specific conjunctures‘, there may well be a ‗dissociation or
inconsistency between them‘ (Ibid.).
We argue that in understanding the variations in US imperialism we also need to examine those
‗specific conjunctures‘ in which one hegemonic project may take the place of another without
necessarily being linked to a concomitant change in accumulation strategy. However, we stress with
Jessop that in order to succeed hegemonic projects need to advance the interests of a dominant class
fraction, and thus to be articulated to a successful accumulation strategy – whether old or new. Success
is not guaranteed, but seeking to advance these interests is what a hegemonic project is about. We
maintain that a hegemonic project moreover also necessarily has a ‗geopolitical‘ dimension, even if
formulated within the national context, especially in the case of a leading capitalist state such as the
US.
As states are key in providing the preconditions for capitalist markets to develop and for
capitalist accumulation to take place (Van Apeldoorn and Horn 2007) any national or transnational
capitalist class is dependent upon the application of state power both nationally and internationally
(e.g., Wood 2003). Hegemonic projects, as expressive of underlying class interests, will therefore have
to articulate not just a vision about how to establish control over subordinate social groups in a
domestic context (i.e. a national-popular programme), but also with respect to world order and the
position of the respective state within it. This is not to imply that geopolitical strategy is in any way
determined by objective class interests. On the contrary, these interests must be articulated politically
and ideologically, and their possible translation into state policy must be seen as a contingent outcome
of social and political struggles. Our claim is, however, that the content of these political and
discursive practices is shaped by the social position of the actors engaging in it and by underlying
social relations.
It is thus from this perspective that this paper interprets US grand strategy and variations thereof
as a dimensions of (successive) hegemonic projects for effectuating and reproducing the power of the
US ruling class, that is, as seeking to serve the long-term interests of the (hegemonic fractions) of the
US capitalist class.3 In understanding the formation of these projects, we also, following Jessop‘s

3
Although focusing upon the geopolitical component of hegemonic projects, we still in this article employ the
concept of hegemonic project as referring to a national programme inasmuch as it is oriented to the advancement
of dominant class fractions that seek both elite and popular consent within the US – rather than transnational or
global – civil society. We thus do not refer to US hegemony as its hegemony within the international system or
world order, or the extent to which a particular national hegemonic project has also been articulated
transnationally (cf. Van Apeldoorn 2004). Through our analysis of the linkages to transnational capital we do
8
‗strategic-relational‘ theory of the state, take into account the state‘s so-called ‗strategic selectivity‘,
that is, its structural set-up (institutional form) – in turn the product of past strategies of and struggles
between social forces – which makes the state apparatus more open to some social classes and groups
than to others and tends to select or favour their strategies over others (ibid.: 261). Here, with Domhoff
(2009), we may note in particular the openness of the US political system to the ‗corporate
community‘ and its strategies, and hence the particular form of the US capitalist state in which
capitalist class hegemony is secured through an almost complete dominance of the policy-planning
process.

HEGEMONIC PROJECTS AND POST- COLD WAR VARIATIONS OF US

IMPERIALISM: COMPARING THE GRAND STRATEGIES OF CLINTON, BUSH
AND OBAMA

As indicated US grand strategy is not simply a foreign policy strategy formulated in isolation of other
policy domains, rather we propose that it must be viewed as part of what is often an overall,
comprehensive ‗grand strategy‘ for seeking to secure the long-term interests of the hegemonic
fractions of the US capitalist class. The concept of hegemonic project here allows us to analyse to
what extent and how grand strategy in its geopolitical sense is linked to capitalist class strategy. To the
extent that this link can be established the agency involved in formulating grand strategies must thus
be seen as going beyond that of the actual policy-makers but ultimately rooted in dominant social
(class) forces. Grand strategy is by definition the product of agency, but agency always within its
structural context. Continuity and change of grand strategy must thus be seen as the outcome of the
dialectical interplay of structure and agency over time. It is important here not to simply identify
structure with continuity and agency with change. It is true that structures cannot change themselves,
which is why agency has to come in, but agency can both transform current structures as well as
reproduce them, thus producing continuity. Without such reproduction the structures would cease to
exist. Hence continuity is equally dependent upon agency. Although reproduction of structures may
often take place unconsciously, in politics a lot of conscious effort is spent on seeking to reproduce
certain structures as part of strategic conduct. It is this, then, that we have to keep in mind when below
analysing the variations of US grand strategy since the end of the Cold War. Both Marxist (e.g., Wood
2003) and non-Marxist literature (e.g., Layne 2006) emphasising the continuity of US grand strategy
tend to take this as a structural given rather than as something that involves continuous efforts on the

focus our attention on the transnational constitution of US national projects, but we focus less on its transnational
effects; although they are part of the changing strategic context that we describe, a more comprehensive analysis
of these dynamics would merit additional research that falls outside the scope of this paper.
9
parts of those actors who stand to benefit with the continuation of current structures or identify
themselves with these interests. It is thus that we will now first briefly describe the historical
continuities of US grand strategy since at least 1940, continuities that we will interpret as structures
(actively) reproduced by relevant strategic actors and as corresponding to what the US capitalist class
elite has perceived to serve its long-term interests.

The continuity of US imperialism

In contrast to what Mearsheimer (2001) and other neo-realists have argued, the weight of historical
evidence clearly points to the fact that US hegemony has not been restricted to the Western
Hemisphere, but has from the turn of the last century onwards expanded outwards, moving from
regional to global hegemony (Lafeber 1994, 1998; Heiss 2002; Layne 2006; Williams 2009).
According to Layne (2006: 3) the latter has become the deliberate strategic goal of the US since the
1940s such that ‗[t]he story of its grand strategy over the past decades is one of expansion‘. In our
view, this expansion is inextricably bound up with the expansion of US capital and the promotion of a
liberal capitalist world order with a dominant or rather hegemonic position of the US and of US capital
within it This, then, is the essence of what following Williams (2009) we call the imperialism of the
Open Door, or the ‗non-colonial imperial‘ policy first explicitly formulated in 1899 (in the so-called
Open Door notes concerning the opening up of the Chinese market to US capital) regarding the
‗conditions under which America‘s preponderant economic power would extend the American system
throughout the world without the embarrassment and inefficiency of traditional colonialism‘ (ibid.:
50). Indeed, such an extension of the American system as a corollary of the expansion of American
capital, can be seen as the overarching goal of America‘s Open Door imperialism as both an ideology
and a practice. As Ellen Wood argues, the US is the first true capitalist empire, which rules by
‗imposing and manipulating the operations of the capitalist market‘ and hence can dispense with
‗direct political rule or colonial occupation‘, even if this capitalist power is still crucially backed up by
the coercive (military) power of the US state (Wood 2003: 21).
As an ideology or world view the Open Door may be seen as consisting of the following five key
interrelated and partly overlapping elements: economic expansionism; promotion of a liberal world
order: ‘democracy’ promotion, the externalisation and ‘globalisation’ of ‘evil’, and US exceptionalism
(cf. Bacevich 2009: 319-20). We will briefly discuss each of these elements in turn:

 Economic expansionism

With the foundations for it laid at the end of the 19th century when the US for the first time turned
overseas expansion into a key foreign policy objective (Lafeber 1994) , this first and crucial element of
10
the Open Door has been premised from the beginning on the ‗firm conviction, even dogmatic belief,
that America‘s domestic well being depends upon such sustained, ever increasing overseas economic
expansion‘ (Williams 2009: 15). It was this belief that informed part of Roosevelt‘s strategy to
overcome the crisis of the 1930s (ibid.: 168-74), in part informed the decision to enter World War II as
well as shaped much of its Cold War strategy, in particular vis-à-vis Europe (Van der Pijl 1984,
Lafeber 1994, Layne 2006, Williams 2009);

 Promotion of ‘free markets’ and a liberal world order (economic openness)

In order to enable economic expansionism, foreign markets need to be opened up to US capital, which
inter alia means that any protective barriers be broken down and ‗free markets‘ and ‗freedom of
enterprise‘ are spread by putting in place the necessary political and institutional conditions around the
globe. As Woodrow Wilson asserted in 1912: ‗If America is not to have free enterprise, then she can
have freedom of no sort whatever‘ (quoted in Williams 2009: 58). This notion has subsequently been
extended to cover much of the whole globe, that is to say, that US policy-making elites came to
believe that the prosperity of US business (and thus of the economy) was dependent on not only
having access to foreign markets but also on European and Asia themselves having ‗free market
systems‘. The US thus has a ‗vested interest‘ in other states having the ―right‖ kind of government‘
that is, governments that avoid autarky and mercantilism, indeed one might say, more autonomous
development (see on this Chomsky 2004: 15, 86, 97), and ‗embrace the incorporation … into an open-
American dominated-international economy‘ (Layne 2006: 34). Any state that would thus challenge
this order and adopt the wrong kind of policies, limiting US expansion, is thus seen as a danger (ibid.,
see also Chomsky 2004; Williams 2009). At the level of world order this of course also implies
promoting, and acting as the guarantor of, international regimes cum global governance supporting
this US dominated liberal world economy;

 Promotion of ‘democracy’ (political openness)

Democracy promotion has been a key plank of the ideology underpinning US grand strategy since
Wilson‘s call to make the world ‗safe for democracy‘ (Ninkovich 1999). For US grand strategy-
makers democracy means not any kind of democracy but US-style liberal democracy, which means
above all that it is seen as ‗inextricably connected with individualism, private property, and a
capitalist economy‘ (Williams 2009: 9). In this sense, the first two objectives in practice (rather than
rhetoric) really trump democracy promotion; or rather the latter is defined in such a way that it is fully
compatible with them. Where democracy is not compatible with US notions of economic freedom or
otherwise with US imperialist interests, the US of course has never shown much restraint in either
supporting the most brutal dictatorships or opposing real democratic advancement (e.g., Chomsky
1998). The point, however, is that ideologically, its grand strategy has been premised on the liberal

11
belief that democracy and free markets go hand in hand and that together these ‗ American ideals‘ are
congruent with American interests;

 The externalisation of ‘evil’

According to Williams (2009: 15), the flip-side of the belief that America‘s prosperity is dependent
upon the outside world (i.e., a US-dominated liberal world economy), is that that same outside world
also becomes to be blamed for any ‗lack of the good life‘. Indeed, in line with a Manichean Puritanism
‗evil‘ becomes externalised, and, as Layne (2006: ch. 6) argues, globalised and deterritorialised. As a
corollary of its Open Door imperialism, defining its interests as global and in ideological terms of
seeking to promote a liberal world order, the US also tends to see potential threats to its security
everywhere around the globe inasmuch as any state, group or movement seen as not to accept this
order can be seen as a threat to that order and is hence to be dealt with as a security threat. 4

 US exceptionalism
The notion that the US is somehow exceptional compared to other great powers in that is it not merely
driven by (power) interests but equally by ideology, or indeed by a unique ‗divine mission‘ ‗to remake
the world‘ has been part of ‗its‘ identity and outlook since the nation‘s founding (Heiss 2002: 520).
The project of ‗remaking others in its own image‘ (ibid.) was at first restricted to North America
(Manifest Destiny) but later, in ever widening circles, came to be include first to the whole Western
hemisphere and in the 20th century, and especially from the 1940s onwards, the whole world (Kagan
2003: 85-88; Layne 2006; Williams 2009). Williams has described this aspect of the US (elite) world
view as a ‗posture of moral and ideological superiority‘: with God on its side America could go about
‗extending the area of freedom‘ and ‗perform the noble work of teaching inferiors to appreciate the
blessings they already enjoyed but were inclined to overlook. In turn, that would prepare them for the
better days to follow under American leadership‘ (Williams 2009: 59).

Taking these five elements together it is clear how this ideology of the Open Door has made global
hegemony a strategic requirement. Pace neo-realism, this, then has not been in order to survive in an
anarchic world, that is, due to any objective security needs of the US, but in order to achieve its Open
Door aims (Layne 2006: 35). The same strategic objective has also necessitated the build-up of a huge
military machine, with the US seeking to achieve and maintain military superiority over any potential
rival, using military power ‗to create a stable international order that is safe for the economic Open

4
It is for this reason then that policy-makers also tend to believe in their own rhetoric even if at the same time
we may also recognise that such ‗securitisation‘ serves a legitimation function in the sense that these threats are
‗constructed‘ in order to further wider imperialist goals (that is, it can be seen as an ideology in the negative
sense of hiding ‗real‘ interests). These two aspects may very well be ‗united‘ within the same individual. This
then makes it ideological rather than mere instrumental.

12
Door‘ (ibid.: 125). Given these global commitments or, as the Pentagon prefers to call them
‗responsibilities‘, the US is also constantly ‗forced to expand the geographical scope of its strategic
commitments (….) ever extending its security commitments even farther into the periphery‘ (ibid.
128).
We would contend that the historical evidence as presented by Layne and others (e.g., Lafeber
1994; Williams 2009) indeed clearly shows continuity in US grand strategy since World War II and to
a large extent before. The question that lies before us though is how to explain this continuity. We
submit that a historical materialist approach focusing on its class origins allows us provide a much
deeper and more comprehensive explanation of this strategy and underlying world view. We thus
interpret the above ‗foreign policy ideology‘ as a class ideology, an outcome that is to be explained in
terms of class agency ensuring that the ‗right strategy‘ continues to be followed, and that where it is
threatened to be derailed, to keep or bring it back on track. As this right strategy therefore always has
to be reproduced and renewed, it will also tend to vary over time depending on the exact constellation
and balance of class forces, the wider structural context in which these forces operate, and how, in
light of this context, these interpret their interests, and how to best achieve them.
Thus while the world view of the Open Door provides the overall ideological framework of US
capitalist imperialism since World War II (and to a large extent since the turn of the last century), the
concrete grand strategy pursued since then also shows considerable variation within this overarching
framework. This variation is brought about through agency, but, linking agency to structure, must also
be seen as rooted in more structural – if politically and ideologically mediated –changes within US
capitalism and its position within the global political economy. It is through the concept of hegemonic
projects, and the way these are, and the extent to which these are articulated to a successful
accumulation strategy, that we seek to make sense of these changes.

US grand strategy under Clinton: neoliberal globalisation

Neoliberalism is essentially a project of restoring capitalist class hegemony after the economic and
social crisis of the 1970s by liberating capital from its post-war constraints through a programme of
marketisation and privatisation (Harvey 2005). As an accumulation strategy neoliberalism has been
bound up with the processes of globalisation and above all financialisation, that is, it has been linked
to the interests and growth strategies of the most globalized transnational corporations, and even more
strongly with that of global financial capital (Van der Pijl 1998; Van Apeldoorn 2002; Duménil and
Lévy, 2001). Although the Reagan administration (1980-1989) is rightly credited with its pioneering
role in the rise of neoliberalism (e.g. Harvey 2005), the neoliberal project was consolidated, deepened,
and indeed globalised under the Clinton presidency (1993-2001). As such, we argue, the evolution of
13
US grand strategy in the Clinton era must be interpreted within the context of a consolidating
neoliberal project that in the 1990s became hegemonic both within US and a US-centred transnational
civil society. The grand strategy into which this translated marked both a continuation of US capitalist
imperialism as well as a change with respect to the particular neoliberal form it came to adopt. What
we will call a strategy of neoliberal globalisation must thus be viewed as part of a wider neoliberal
hegemonic project.
Underlining the continuity with the Open Door, Clinton‘s National Security Strategy (NSS) 5 of
1995 defined ‗promoting prosperity at home‘ in terms of a policy of ‗free trade and to press for open
and equal U.S. access to foreign markets‘ and argued furthermore that this goal was inextricably
linked to the US‘s other two primary foreign policy objectives, ‗promoting democracy‘ and
‗enhancing our security‘ (White House 1995: 7. i). The US, ‗called upon to lead – to organize the
forces of freedom and progress‘ (White House 1998: 1), must thus, as the 1998 NSS put it, promote
‗democracy and free markets‘ with the two equated even to the extent that Clinton‘s two NSS
documents consistently refer not to democracies but to (the community of) market democracies (White
House 1995, 1998).
Although thus reproducing the Open Door world view, what was distinctive about the grand
strategy of Clinton, was its translation of that view in a neoliberal globalisation offensive (cf. Van der
Pijl 2006: ch. 8) in which not only free trade but also the freedom of (US) capital were pursued with
renewed vigour, and without the national and international restraints that characterised what Van der
Pijl (1984) has called the ‗corporate liberal‘ post-war era that lasted until the Reagan administration.
The ‗disembedded liberalism‘ of the 1990s constituted a global marketisation project that critically
included the liberalisation of financial markets. It was thus that US imperialism in the 1990s came to
operate primarily through its control over the key institutions of neoliberal global governance or what
David Harvey dubbed ‗the Wall Street-Treasury-IMF complex‘ (Harvey 2003: 18; see also Gowan
1999). Geopolitically, the main difference with Cold War administrations, including Reagan‘s, was
that US imperialism was no longer ‗constrained‘ by the containment and ultimate defeat of the Soviet
Union. The end of the Cold War– and the ‗unipolar moment‘ (Krauthammer 1991) it appeared to
create – had created a historic opportunity to achieve what had been the overarching goal of US grand
strategy since 1940, that is, global hegemony within a liberal capitalist world order. And while the
Bush Sr. administration (1989-1993) still seemed more confused than following any clear post-Cold
War grand strategy in this respect (LaFeber 1994: 752, see also White House 1989), the Clinton
administration pro-actively seized this opportunity, and its foreign policy-makers and intellectuals in
surrounding networks formulated a new mission for the unipole: a US-centred and US-led
‗globalisation‘ premised on and propagating a neoliberal agenda of opening and expanding markets

5
Arguable the National Security Strategies as formulated by successive administrations is the most
comprehensive public statement of US grand strategy, hence this key foreign policy document will serve as our
point of departure in the following analyses of US grand strategy.
14
(LaFeber 2002: 543; cf. Dumbrell 2002: 50). Indeed, no US president before or after Clinton extolled
the virtues of globalization, calling upon the US and the world to ‗embrace the inexorable logic of
globalization‘ (Clinton 1999).
Although this globalisation agenda was ideologically premised on the notion of liberal
democratic states realising mutual gains through peaceful cooperation, Clinton, in true Wilsonian
fashion, was very well aware that his liberal internationalist policy of promoting market democracies
still had to be backed up by US military might (ibid., LaFeber 1994: 767). And military force,
whether under the guise of humanitarian intervention or otherwise, was indeed used by Clinton in or
against Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, and, most massively, Serbia. The latter war,
launched without a UN mandate but in the multilateral context of NATO, was arguably moreover
fought with the context of a broader geopolitical strategy centred on NATO expansion and increasing
penetration of US power into former Soviet territory (Cafruny 2009; Van der Pijl 2006: ch. 8).
Furthermore, Clinton‘s alleged foreign policy doctrine of ‗democratic enlargement‘ (Brinkley 1997),
above all implied a more coercive stance against ‗rogue states‘ (Dumbrell 2002), the Clinton
administration‘s version of the ‗externalisation of evil‘ that became increasingly dominant in its
foreign policy discourse towards the end of the 1990s.
Nevertheless, the Clinton presidency was not always decisive in its use of force (ibid.: 52), which
was moreover mostly restricted to airstrikes and so-called low-intensity warfare. Geopolitical rivalries
were also more muted in the post-Cold War 1990s and Clinton‘s neoliberal globalisation strategy
generally emphasized consent – promoting ‗good governance‘ through Washington-based
international institutions – over coercion. In this context, though unilateralist tendencies were growing
especially in Clinton‘s second term, ‗multilateralism‘ was still a favoured concept and foreign policy
instrument within Clinton‘s variety of US imperialism, especially in the economic area (Dumbrell
2002: 49, 53; Skidmore 2005), with the creation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995
celebrated as a major foreign policy success (e.g., White House 1998: 34).
In sum, the grand strategy pursued by the Clinton administration in the 1990s reproduced the
Open Door imperialism of the Cold War era but did so with a new ‗neoliberal twist‘ oriented towards
the promotion of globalisation as a programme of global marketisation and commodification, with
‗multilateralism‘ and ‗global governance‘ as primary instruments, even if still backed up by the threat
- and indeed regular application - of military force. As indicated, we interpret this first post- Cold War
variety of US imperialism as the geopolitical dimension of a broader neoliberal hegemonic project that
sought to advance the long-term interests of the US capitalist class.
As the 20th century came to a close the contradictions and limits of Clinton‘s neoliberal
globalisation strategy and the wider hegemonic project from which it emanated became increasingly
manifest (for a more elaborate discussion see De Graaff and Van Apeldoorn forthcoming). Internally,
the atomisation and social disintegration that neoliberalism engenders has increasingly undermined the

15
social order that sustains capital accumulation and thus called for some kind of restoration of that
order (see Harvey, 2003: 15-7). But also globally (i.e. externally) the transnational hegemony of
neoliberalism had been weakening, with various social forces around the world increasingly resisting
the discipline imposed by neoliberal globalisation and challenging US imperialism as a result (van der
Pijl 2006). Moreover, the grand strategy of Clinton aimed at promoting neoliberal globalisation was
also reaching its geopolitical limits as the dynamics of global capital accumulation were increasingly
shifting the centre of gravity of the global economy away from the Atlantic, with rival centres of
accumulation in East Asia (especially China) threatening the geopolitical and geo-economic pre-
eminence of the US, thus underlining the limits of a strategy that had aimed at incorporating these
potential contenders into the US-dominated neoliberal order. With consent for the latter hence waning
both domestically and internationally; a more coercive strategy increasingly came to the fore – a
coercion deemed necessary to hold on to US primacy as premised upon the Open Door.

US grand strategy under Bush: the neoconservative turn

As argued in more detail elsewhere (De Graaff and Van Apeldoorn forthcoming), so-called
neoconservative intellectuals had been promoting such an alternative project, and in particular a more
coercive US foreign policy, throughout the 1990s through a dense network of think tanks and policy
advocacy groups with the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) becoming the focal point of
the formulation of a new hegemonic project and a concomitant grand strategy. It was only in the
context of the rising contradictions and limits of neoliberalism described above and after the shock of
9/11, however, that this comprehensive programme could win hegemonic appeal within the US and
could to a large extent be implemented by the administration of George W. Bush (2001-2009). Before
examining this new neoconservative grand strategy in more detail, let us first look at the broader
underlying hegemonic project.
Although neoconservatism has much in common with neoliberalism – in particular in its aim at
preserving capitalist class power through strengthening the market as the arbiter of social life – it also
goes beyond neoliberalism in that it explicitly recognises that the price mechanism alone cannot
sufficiently provide order in society. It is the overriding concern with order, and the willingness to
back up that order through coercion, both domestically and internationally, that distinguishes the
neoconservative from the neoliberal hegemonic project. As Harvey (2005: 82). writes:

Neoconservatism [...] has reshaped neoliberal practices in two fundamental respects: first, in
its concern for order as an answer to the chaos of individual interests, and second, in its
concern for an overweening morality as the necessary social glue to keep the body politic
secure in the face of internal and external dangers.

16
This neoconservative ‗answer‘ to the social and (geo-)political contradictions of the neoliberal project,
has been translated into a distinct US grand strategy, that is, a new variety of US imperialism,
modifying the neoliberal project while continuing to be premised on the same accumulation strategy. 6
The grand strategy pursued by the administration of Bush Jr., like that of its predecessors was
once more was firmly embedded within and thus reproduced the basic tenets of ‗Open Door‘
imperialism. At the same time, however, it represented in several respects, a more extreme or
radicalised version of it (Wood 2003; Callinicos 2003). Yet this distinctiveness should not lead us to
ignore the strong continuities. Thus the notorious NSS of 2002 starts by formulating the main
objectives of US grand strategy in strikingly familiar language. After noting that ‗[t]he great struggles
of the twentieth century (….) ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom—and a single
sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.‘ (White House 2002:
unnumbered page), the document outlines a strategy ‗based on a distinctly American internationalism
(…) to help make the world not just safer but better‘ (ibid.: 1). Apart from reflecting the discourse of
American exceptionalism what then follows clearly reproduces the ideology of the economic and
political Open Door, invoking the goals of ‗political and economic freedom‘, and seeking to ‗ignite a
new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade‘ and ‗expand the circle of
development by opening societies and building the infrastructure of democracy‘ (ibid.: 1-2). Here the
opening of societies above all means to ‗open [them‘] to commerce and investment‘ (ibid.: 22). As the
NSS summarises: ‗[f]ree markets and free trade are key priorities of our national security strategy‘
(ibid.: 23). Next to continuing US‘s long-standing policies in this respect, the specific policies
advocated in this realm, policies such as lowering taxation of business and creating efficient capital
markets, and generally to ‗strengthen market incentives and market institutions‘ also reflect a
continuation of the Clintonite neoliberal agenda. For Bush, this for instance included a continuing
strong commitment to institutions such as the WTO and its newly launched Doha Round (White
House 2006: 25-7).
Although Bush‘s foreign policy has often been singled out for its ‗idealistic‘ democracy
promotion and ‗freedom agenda‘ this as such was no more than a vigorous reaffirmation of the Open
Door (cf. Monten 2005). What made the US grand strategy of the G.W. Bush administration
distinctive was the extent to which it openly promoted and applied the use of military force to achieve
Open Door aims, or, differently put: how it emphasised coercion over consent (Harvey 2003). This can
be seen in the following four elements of the grand strategy pursued under Bush. First, with regard to
the so-called Bush doctrine, it was not that the US had not implicitly reserved the right to strike ‗pre-
emptively‘ in the past, and indeed had also done so on several occasions, it was the blatant openness
with which this was elevated to a new foreign policy doctrine (White House 2002: 5, 15-6) that was

6
For more on the ideas that have informed the neoconservative project see e.g. Kagan and Kristol, 2000;
Steltzer, 2004; Hurst, 2005.
17
new and that reveals the distinctive character of Bush‘s neoconservative variety of US imperialism.
Crucially of course, the new doctrine was swiftly and most destructively ‗applied‘ with the invasion
and occupation of Iraq. Second, whereas global hegemony has been a long-standing goal of US grand
strategy, perceiving that now that a unipolar position had effectively been achieved (ibid.: 1),
maintaining US primacy became an explicit commitment. This commitment was defined above all in
terms of US military supremacy, which had to be maintained ‗beyond challenge‘ (ibid.: 29). Third,
accelerating and deepening a trend that started under Clinton‘s second term, the Bush administration
embraced a much more brazen unilateralism in defence of US primacy (see Skidmore 2005). Finally,
the familiar element of democracy promotion was now above all translated into the objective of
‗regime change‘ by military means.
These elements were discursively articulated, and legitimated by, the concept of the war on
terror, a clear example of the ‗externalisation of evil‘ that as indicated has always been a component
of the Open Door world view, but that now more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, returned
with a vengeance. It enabled the construction of a new and ubiquitous ‗global‘ enemy – ‗not a single
political regime or person or religion or ideology. The enemy is terrorism‘ (NSS 2002:5). This
‗enemy‘ is one of ‗global reach‘ (ibid.: 5), with threats potentially arising everywhere, thus making the
war on terror into a ‗global enterprise of uncertain duration‘ (ibid.: unnumbered page), indeed what
some neoconservatives have called the fourth world war (the Cold War being the second) that could
last at least a generation (Podhoretz 2004; see also Lynch and Singh 2008). This effective redefinition
of the US security environment legitimated a further militarisation of US foreign policy – with the US
defence budget rising under Bush from around US$ 400 billion to over US$ 700 billion – and enabled
new forms of international and military cooperation such as ad hoc ‗coalitions of the willing‘ (see for
this last point also Krahmann, 2005). Above all, it was under the banner of the war on terror, a war
against ‗militant, radical, Islam‘ that a coercive geopolitical strategy aimed at the global promotion of
US-centred neoliberal accumulation could be presented as in the general interest of ‗ultimately
fighting for our democratic values and way of life‘ (White House, 2002:31). Indeed, how this coercive
geopolitical strategy was tied up to the overall objective of the expansion of US capital and the
opening of previously closed areas has been illustrated in Iraq. 7 As indicated, although reflecting a
novel hegemonic project in terms of a national-popular strategy and a political formula to organise
consent and mobilise it in favour of a bellicose foreign policy, the neoconservative project remained
committed to a neoliberal accumulation strategy aimed at the global expansion and deepening of
capitalist markets to the perceived benefit of US transnational capital.

7
This policy was effectively put into practice by the US Coalition Provisional Authority under the leadership of
Paul Bremer, which between 2003-2004 abolished many tariffs on imports, capped corporate and income tax,
and exposed Iraqi firms to free competition which led to general asset-stripping and the closing down of Iraqi
firms.
18
 To the end of Bush‘s reign this hegemonic project also ran into its own set of limits and
contradictions. First, although the ‗war on terror‘ was supported by a broad international coalition, the
aggressive unilateralism displayed by the Bush administration and its explicit disregard of
international law and human rights did exactly what both realist and liberal critics warned for, namely
further erode the already waning legitimacy of US hegemony and, even if not provoking overt
counter-balancing, at least encourage new rising powers to become more assertive. Secondly, it has
been precisely the neoconservative continued commitment to a neoliberal strategy that now forcefully
revealed the latter‘s structural limits. Thus the global financial and economic crisis that erupted
towards the end of the Bush presidency demonstrated the bankruptcy of the neoliberal policy
orthodoxy that had first achieved global hegemony under Clinton. The ongoing crisis, has both
economically and politically further weakened US power and discredited its global policies. This
formed the structural global context in which Obama and his administration came to power in search
of a new and more effective strategy. To what extent they are succeeding, and to what extent it
represents ‗real change‘, is another matter.

US grand strategy under Obama: towards a new hegemonic project?

Although some commentators have characterised Obama‘s foreign policy as ‗realist‘ – as opposed to
the neoconservative ‗idealism‘ of Bush (Quinn 2009; Kitchen 2009) – a closer analysis of the
unfolding geopolitical strategy of the current administration in fact shows that it, like that of its
predecessor, continues in the tradition of Wilsonian power politics that has been characteristic of
America‘s imperialism of the Open Door (Layne 2006: 9). Already as a presidential candidate Obama
(2007a), in clear Wilsonian tradition, called for a ‗renewal of American leadership‘. In an
unequivocally ‗exceptionalist‘ rhetoric, Obama warned that ‗to see American power in terminal
decline is to ignore America‘s great promise and historic purpose in the world‘ (ibid.: 3), which is to
lead ‗not only for ourselves but also for the common good‘ (ibid.:15).8 In the same Foreign Affairs
article, he made clear that renewing American leadership above all meant renewing and rebuilding the
US military as ‗[a] strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace‘ (ibid.: 5). Peace
here still means a Pax Americana, a global capitalist empire of which the US, with its overwhelming
military superiority, continues to act as the guarantor and enforcer. As Obama‘s National Security
Strategy of 2010 unequivocally states: ‗there should be no doubt: the United States of America will
continue to underwrite global security‘ (White House 2010: 1). So the hegemonic ambition remains a
global one and also defined in what Layne calls ‗milieu goals‘ (rather than just merely maintaining the

8
For more exceptionalist discourse see e.g. Obama 2009c [Oslo speech], cf. Kitchen 2009 who offers an
opposite interpretation.
19
balance of power): ‗to shape an international order that promotes a just peace‘ with an ‗open
international economic system‘ defined as an ‗enduring‘ American interest (ibid.: 5, 7). The US,
‗uniquely suited to seize‘ the promise of globalisation, and having in part produced it (ibid.: 5) remains
committed to ‗opening markets around the globe [that] will promote global competition and
innovation and will be crucial to our prosperity‘ (ibid.: 32).
Obama‘s unfolding grand strategy shows not only strong continuities with the Open Door
imperialism of the past seven decades or so, but also with the particular neoconservative variety of that
imperialism as pursued by Bush Jr., that is to say, in its continued relative emphasis on coercion
Obama is more the heir of the last Republican than of the last Democratic president. Already in 2007,
in what is far from a repudiation of the Bush doctrine, Obama, while also emphasizing the need for
international support , added that ‗I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect
the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened‘ (ibid.
6), a position he re-affirmed in office in his National Security Strategy (White House 2010: 22) where
threats are seen as coming from ‗rogue states allied to terrorists and from rising powers that could
challenge both America and the international foundation of liberal democracy‘ (ibid.: 2). If we look at
how this strategy is implemented in practice then we can observe that the ‗war on terror‘ – though that
phrase is usually no longer used – is only intensifying under Obama. While he started a partial
withdrawal from Iraq, the effort has switched to Afghanistan and Pakistan, a shift that in fact had
already commenced under Robert Gates when he was still Bush‘s Secretary of Defence, and whose re-
appointment in that position by Obama underlines the continuity. To ‗disrupt, dismantle, and defeat
Al-Qa‘ida and its violent extremist affiliates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and around the world‘ (ibid.:
19) remains a key plank of the America‘s security strategy. Since Obama came into office the number
US troops in Afghanistan almost trebled. Moreover, the theatre of war has been quietly expanded. As
of July 2010 the number of ‗pre-emptive‘, illegal and unacknowledged ‗drone strikes‘ (bombings from
unmanned airplanes) into Pakistani territory carried out by the Obama administration is more than
double the total carried out under Bush, producing a record number of casualties (amongst whom
many civilians, New America Foundation 2010; Entous 2010). In addition, Obama has ordered an
expansion of covert warfare, with ‗Special Operations‘ forces now secretly operating in 75 countries
(up from 60 in 2009). Next to more money being spent on these operations, according to military
officials quoted in a Washington Post report this part of the military has much better access to the
White House than was the case under Bush, with the Obama administration ‗willing to get aggressive
much more quickly‘ (DeYoung and Jaffe 2010).9 As Robert Kagan, a key neoconservative author,
summarises approvingly: ‗[a]lthough the Obama administration may be more generous in providing

9
These Special Operations include unilateral strikes, training of local counter-terrorism units and joint
operations with the latter. Yemen is a recent example of a country where all three types are practiced (DeYoung
and Jaffe 2010).
20
legal defense to captured terrorists than the Bush administration, it also makes a greater effort to
assassinate them, thus obviating the need for trials‘ (Kagan 2010).
Although the ‗war on terror‘ goes on unabated, there are at least two significant differences with
Bush‘s grand strategy that may point to yet a new variety of US imperialism, and both these elements
can be read as a direct response to the limits and contradictions of neoconservative imperialism as they
became manifest in the final Bush years. The first is that the Obama administration does tend to
recognise the limits of US power a bit more clearly in a world that is arguably now more multipolar
than unipolar. This leads to a call for more representative international institutions, ‗giving a broader
voice—and greater responsibilities—for emerging powers‘ (White House 2010: 3) and for more
diplomacy and engagement with both allies and hostile powers, seeking to ‗[galvanize] the collective
action that can serve common interests‘ (ibid.: 3). Although this liberal internationalist agenda, fitting
well with the ‗one world idealism‘ of the democratic tradition (Van der Pijl 2006) might above all be a
call to others to follow US leadership, it also in part means a shift back to the discourse – if not always
the practice – of multilateralism that had been largely abandoned by Bush. The renewed search for
consent that we have observed in Obama‘s first year, however, is one that is borne out of the fact that
the US has only few cards left, and hence can be seen as part of a conscious attempt to restore some of
the ‗soft power‘ so obviously squandered by the previous administration. This is crucially different
from the neoliberal globalisation strategy of the Clinton years, which were the heyday for the power of
both the US and of neoliberal ideology. In short, inasmuch as multilateralism is making somewhat of a
comeback, it is out of weakness rather than strength.
The second and arguably more important new element is the recognition of the importance of the
economy and the need for a renewed long-term growth strategy. Indeed, striking is the number of
pages spent in Obama‘s NSS at what traditional IR scholars would regard as domestic issues, in
particular the efforts to sustain the recovery from the 2008-2009 recession: ‗At the center of our efforts
is a commitment to renew our economy, which serves as the wellspring of American power (White
House 2010: 2) Although, the link between ‗prosperity‘ – seen as dependent upon an open global
economy – and ‗security‘ has always been at the heart of the Open Door, this link has now gotten
renewed attention in the context of the crisis of the neoliberal model. It has been the current crisis that
has clearly pressed home to the Obama administration the message that any hegemonic project, and
any project of US imperialism, has to be premised on sustained economic growth (capital
accumulation) in order to succeed. However, the extent to which this should also entail a new
accumulation strategy and what such a strategy should look like – is something that the Obama
administration thus far has remained rather vague on.
In any case, and in spite of these differences with the Bush era, it is too soon to say whether or
not the limited shift in US grand strategy – that is, a change within very strong continuities – that we
can observe under Obama thus far is reflective of a new hegemonic project in the making, a project

21
through which the US ruling class seeks to reproduce its power at home and internationally after the
crisis. One problem is of course that – with a renewed and increased fear for a so-called ‗double dip‘ –
the crisis appears to be still far from over.
The future course of US grand strategy under Obama and his successors is not predetermined but
will depend on the dialectical interplay of structure and agency. Having described the grand strategies
as pursued by the three administrations– interpreted as variations of US Open Door imperialism – and
having placed them in their structural context, we should now turn to the role of agency, that is to the
specific actors and their social positions involved in making US grand strategy.

NETWORKS OF CAPITALIST CLASS POWER: THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF US

POST- COLD WAR STRATEGY

In the previous section we have seen how US grand strategy since the end of the Cold War continued
the long-standing tradition of US Open Door imperialism but also showed some significant variation
as it evolved from the Clinton to the Bush and to the Obama administrations. We have suggested that
both this continuity and the changes within it can be explained in terms of the capitalist class strategy
underpinning it. In order to understand how and why this class strategy has come to inform US grand
strategy we have to empirically examine the social origins of the variations of US grand strategy as
observed above. As indicated, our theoretical premise is that the capitalist class cannot simply secure
its hegemony by relying on the state‘s structural dependence on capital (accumulation), but has to
involve pro-active class agency to articulate and propagate its interests and translate it into
governmental policy. If this is the case then we should be able to trace links between those who
formulate and implement US grand strategy – that is, the relevant state managers within the US
government – on the one hand and capitalist class interests, operationalised as dominant sections of
US capital on the other. In other words, identifying the networks of actors and institutions ‗behind‘
each administration through which we claim that capitalist class agency is exercised.
In particular we will examine and compare the corporate and civil society links of relevant
members of each of the three administrations – Clinton, Bush and Obama – in order to see to what
extent the grand strategy pursued by these administrations is in effect formulated by a set of actors
who are not just arguably structurally bound by the interests of capital, but also embedded in networks
that tie them personally to these interests. For this purpose we have undertaken a network analysis for
which we selected what we regard as the key foreign policy makers within each administration at the
start of each presidency (Clinton: 1993, Bush: 2001, Obama: 2009). Foreign policy here must be
understood broadly as to involve all those policies with a distinct external dimension, that is, as
22
relating to policy-instruments through which the US exercises its global power. Thus next to the
President, the Secretaries of State and Defence and their Deputies, the National Security Advisor, this
for instance also includes the Secretary of the Treasury, and other key foreign economic policy-
makers. We only included the highest level cabinet members (secretary and deputy secretary) and
White House cabinet-level staff, as well as some key influential advisors (both formal such as Council
of Economic Advisors and informal ‗behind the scene‘ advisors), giving a total N of 30 per
administration. For each of these individual actors, we collected biographical data of their (previous)
state positions, corporate affiliations, affiliations with think tanks, research institutions, club
membership, academic affiliations, educational background and demographic data. Data were
collected from: US governmental websites (e.g. White House, Pentagon), official websites of the
individuals affiliations (e.g. company-, university-, think tanks- websites), Annual Reports of affiliated
companies, Business Week, and the International Relations Center - Right Web.10 In this paper we will
focus on the corporate affiliations and on the institutional affiliations (with e.g. think tanks, policy
advocacy groups, research institutes etc.).

Corporate Affiliations

For the analysis of the composition of the corporate links of the core members of each administration‘s
‗grand strategy makers‘ we included all affiliations (i.e. formal positions within a company, including
both executive, founding, and non-executive, advisory positions) until and including the year in which
a person entered the respective administration. If we look at the total number of corporate affiliations
at the start of each administration we find that there around 50 corporate affiliations in the network of
each administration.11 Divided over 30 individuals in each case this shows that all three
administrations were well embedded in extensive corporate networks, that is to say that many key
policy-makers had important ties to the US corporate community. Both the high number of total
corporate affiliations and the fact that it stays more or less constant over the three administrations are
an important indication of continuity in terms of the corporate ties of US government, indicating the
dominance of the corporate community and capitalist class over the US policy planning process
(Domhoff 2009).

10
The data collection is based on desk research and not on interviews / surveys of the actors, hence only those
affiliations that are made public are included, the total number of affiliations might hence be underestimated.
11
This is an estimate on the basis of all corporate affiliations in our database, including those for which we lack a
time indication. Further research will here have to yield more precise figures.
23
 When all affiliations were mapped, they were further categorised into sectors12, Table 1 below
compares the results for each administration in terms of percentages.13

Table 1: Corporate Affiliations Key Policy Makers - Clinton (1993), Bush (2001), Obama (2009)

40
35
30
25
20
15
10
Clinton 1993
5
Bush 2001
0
Obama 2009

Sources: US government (White House, Pentagon), corporate websites, annual reports, university and think tank
websites, Business Week, International Relations Center.

Although this chart shows some interesting variation in terms of the sectoral affiliations of the
different administrations, it also reveals a relative dominance of the finance and consultancy sector as
a recurring feature of these three administrations. Although it is clearly the Clinton administration (in
1993) that was most extensively linked to these sectors, the difference with the Bush administration (in
2001) is not more than 10%. This contrasts the popular (and also academically widely iterated)
perception of the special interests of the military-industrial complex ‗high-jacking‘ the Bush
administration and determining its foreign policy. In fact, quite surprisingly, the latter‘s core foreign

12
Here we followed the categories that are used by the Center for Responsive Politics on e.g. US campaign
financing (REF!!), with the only adjustment that we have separated the Construction and Transportation sectors
from the Miscellaneous category and made them an autonomous category.
13
Since we only want to include corporate affiliations until a particular time, we could not include those without
a specific time indication. In particular for the Clinton administration this proved difficult, only about half of its
time indications were known. Hence the absolute number of affiliations – especially for the Clinton
administration is probably underrepresented. We can therefore only meaningfully compare the affiliations in
terms of percentages. This gives us a firm preliminary assessment, with further research allowing us to fill out
many of these missing values and adjust for possible inconsistencies.
24
policy team turns out to have had no formal affiliations with the defence industry at all, in contrast to
both the Clinton and the Obama administration.14
How should we interpret this variation, and – even more importantly – lack of variation? It is not
our claim that special sectoral interests determine grand strategy formulation, but that the long-term
continuities of US imperialism, with its particular ‗Open Door character‘, have to be interpreted in the
context of the advancement of US capital(ist) interests, in particular those fractions of US capital that
are internationally oriented, e.g. (large) transnational corporations, financial capital and insurance,
global business consultancy and international lawyers. The relative dominance of the finance and
consultancy sector in terms of individual ties of core foreign policy makers does seem to corroborate
this claim (and our ‗continuity‘ argument in this respect).15 The lack of variation between the
administrations also makes clear that changes in the grand strategy cannot be explained merely by the
corporate affiliations of the ‗grand strategy makers‘ as such, which underscores our point that grand
strategy is not so much determined by narrow corporate interests, but rather by more general
capital(ist) interests, or: a more general interest in continued capital accumulation (shared by all
members of the capitalist class). How this general interest is articulated into a more comprehensive
class strategy, that is, a potentially hegemonic project and how the latter is translated into a grand
strategy tends to differ not only according to changes in the structural context (both domestically and
internationally) as described above, but also in the way in which this context is interpreted, that is,
mediated by ideas and ideology. We therefore have to examine more precisely which specific (groups
of ) actors are actually involved in the making of grand strategy. Here it has to be pointed out that that
even if there tends to be a strong agreement on the most fundamental issues, some political and
ideological differences, which cannot be simply reduced to divergent material interests, can also be
observed within the US ruling class. The extent to which such differences can also be detected in the
social networks of the key grand strategy makers will be examined below by comparing the networks
of think tank affiliations of the three administrations.

14
Cf. De Graaff and Van Apeldoorn, forthcoming, in which the network of neoconservative intellectuals and
advisors associated with the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) were analysed. This did generate a
significant number of defence affiliations, illustrating that indeed there were such affiliated interests behind the
broader neoconservative project, yet that these actors – even if influential - did not necessarily become the core
foreign policy makers; underscoring our claim that Bush‘s grand strategy cannot be interpreted as a simple
‗putch‘ by crony capitalists.
15
In particular with respect to the finance sector this might also explain part of the continuity in terms of the
neoliberal accumulation strategy underpinning the grand strategies and hegemonic projects. However, some
caution is asked for here, since a similar pattern might very well be found prior to the neoliberal accumulation
strategy.
25
Ideological and Political Affiliation Networks

For this analysis the affiliations with think tanks, policy advocacy groups, and research institutes were
mapped and translated into two-mode networks, i.e. including both the actors and their affiliations in
the same network, employing Social Network Analysis (SNA) (on SNA‘s merits and limits see e.g.
Scott 2001; Wasserman and Faust 1994, Hanneman and Riddle 2005). The results that this generated
are shown in three network graphs below.

Graph 1: Think Tank Affiliations Clinton 1993 – Only Nodes with >1 Degree

G7 Group
Albright
Reich
Perry
Altman
Tyson
McLarty
Daley
Trilateral Commission
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Bilderberg Group
Berger
Aspin Council on Foreign Relations

Warren
Partnership for a Secure America
Wharton
Rubin
Lake
Blinder Carnegie Corporation

American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Foreign Policy Association

Econometric Society
Bernanke

26
Graph 2: Think Tank Affiliations Bush 2001 – Only Nodes with >1 Degree

World Bank Group

National Bureau of Economic Research
Perle
Richard Kroszner
Zoellick

Wolfowitz American Enterprise Institute

Lewis
Project for the New American Century (PNAC) McClellan

Cheney Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

Bolton
Khalilzad Brookings Institution
Hubbard

Hoover Institution Rumsfeld

Council on Foreign Relations
Zakheim
Damn
RAND Corporation
Rice
Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG)
O'Neill Center for Security Policy

Graph 3: Think Tank Affiliationa Obama 2009 – Only Nodes with >1 Degree

Römer Goolsbee

Atlantic Council of the United States Democratic Leadership Council

National Bureau of Economic Research

Rice

Wolin
Holbrooke
Steinberg
Council on Foreign Relations RAND Corporation
Center for a New American Security
Tyson

Geithner Danzig
Brookings Institution

Trilateral Commission
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Peterson Institute for International Economics
G30
Volcker Orszag Summers

Sources: US government (White House, Pentagon), corporate websites, annual reports, university and think tank
websites, Business Week, International Relations Center.

27
It is important to emphasise that these networks of think tanks and policy planning groups are also
very much class-based networks inasmuch as they are in turn also strongly linked to dominant
sections of US capital as documented by extensive sociological research (for an overview see
Domhoff 2009; see also Burris 2008). In this respect, then, differences within these networks have to
be seen as intra-class differences.
In contrast to the corporate affiliations, the think tank affiliations generate quite distinct
networks, especially with respect to the Bush network. All three administration members have
connections to the Council on Foreign Relations and Center for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS) (which are – as confirmed by these data – very central, bipartisan and mainstream think tanks
within the US foreign policy establishment). Other similarities we find are between the ‗Bush
network‘ and ‗Obama network‘ both having affiliations with Brookings Institution and the RAND
Corporation, and between the ‗Obama network‘ and the ‗Clinton network‘ concerning their
affiliations with the Trilateral Commission. Otherwise they are quite differently configured.
The graphs only show the network established by nodes (actors and think tanks) with more than
one affiliation (i.e. have > 1 degree), which has the advantage – apart from making them more
‗readable‘ - that it gives a direct impression of the main component (i.e. the largest connected
network). In the case of the Clinton and the Obama administration this rendered quite small networks,
with many actors falling outside of the main component, especially in the case of the ‗Obama
network‘. However, this was not the case with the ‗Bush network‘, where only one actor fell outside of
the main component, and the network generally turned out to be more connected and with higher node
degrees (i.e. more affiliations per actor and / or think tank). The ‗Bush network‘ is also characterised
by the prominence of two explicitly neoconservative think tanks: the American Enterprise Institute
(AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which have a very central position in
the network and each have between 8 and 10 core members of the Bush administrations connected to
them. Other neoconservative think tanks/advocacy groups connected to the Bush network are: Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs, Center for Peace and Security in the Gulf (active lobby group
for the removal of Saddam Hussein since at least 1998), and the hawkish and highly influential foreign
policy think tank Center for Security Policy. This indicates first of all that amongst the key foreign
policy makers of the Bush administration (in 2001) there has been more interaction and shared
membership within these ideological and policy advising platforms outside of government than has
been case with the other two administrations. The prominence of many outspoken neoconservative
think tanks in the Bush network must be seen as a key factor in the adminstration‘s grand strategy
making (see De Graaff and Van Apeldoorn forthcoming for a more elaborate analysis of this process
concerning the neoconservative project).
Overall, the variation in the networks indeed indicates that differences in US grand strategy
making are related to differences in think tank affiliation, in other words: ideas matter! A more precise

28
analysis of how these differences in ideas are configured and – even more crucially – how these then
are translated into grand strategy requires more in-depth research, of e.g. the policy documents
generated by these think tanks, the actors involved and alternative paths through which these (might)
reach government. Nonetheless, these data do give an important indication of the link between
variation in think tank affiliation and differences in grand strategy formulation. In combination with
our findings on the (relative lack of variation) in corporate affiliations this leads us to the following
preliminary conclusions:

 That there are capital(ist) class interests behind US grand strategy formulation, not only in a
structurally determined sense, but also in terms of personal ties to the US corporate
community;

 That the configuration of these ties shows substantially more similarity than variance,
indicating a great deal of shared interests in terms of the advancement of more general and -
arguably long-term - US capital(ist) interests as also expressed in the continuities of US Open
Door imperialism; it shows moreover that variety in US grand strategy cannot be explained by
the corporate affiliations;

 That the differences in the grand strategy (i.e. different translations of the same basic
objectives of the US Open Door imperialism) - apart from being strongly interrelated with the
changing structural context – might instead be partly attributable to differences in the
ideological and political affiliation of the networks..

Conclusion

Our analysis has thus shown that in order to understand both the continuity and the changes in US
grand strategy since the end of the Cold War we need go beyond conventional theories of foreign
policy which, even if they break open the proverbial black box of the national state, pay insufficient
attention to social (class) forces within civil society. We thus adopted a historical materialist
framework that focuses on the mediating role played by class interests and class agency.
From this perspective we argued that US grand strategy since the end of the Cold War has
continued to reproduce the basic tenets of the Open Door world view that has been underpinning US
imperialism since at least 1940. This continuity has been underpinned by and can be explained in
terms of the hegemonic position of those of US capital that are transnational and global in their
outlook and have thus favoured a ‗liberal‘ expansionist foreign policy, achieving global hegemony not
through territorial expansion but through creating and maintaining, with much military force if
necessary, an ‗empire of capital‘ (Wood 2003). We have seen how with regard to the two past
administrations as well as the current one, these sections of US capital and concomitant fraction of the

29
US capitalist class have continued their hold on US government in part in virtue of the fact that many
of the state managers involved in grand strategy-making are in fact closely linked to these interests.
At the same time, we have seen, how within the admittedly narrow bands of Open Door
imperialism, US grand strategy has been undergoing some significant shifts from Clinton to Bush, and
(though arguably less clearly thus far) to Obama. These changes too have been interpreted as related to
class agency, in particular to different (hegemonic) projects to maintain the hegemony of the US ruling
class. However, as our social network analysis shows, these changes, in effect variations of US
imperialism, must less be seen as the result of changes in the basic configuration of class interests,
which has remained pretty much the same, and more as a result of how different groups of actors
within the US ruling class have responded to a changing structural context.
Although our data analysis is as yet incomplete and preliminary, and more research and analysis
needs to be undertaken, our findings do suggest that examining the social origins of US grand strategy
by analysing the social relations of the grand strategy-makers involved can provide us with a deeper
understanding and explanation of the social purpose served by US imperialism.

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