The discussion centers on the Iranian Revolution as a fundamental challenge to U.S. imperialism, which is analyzed as a global structure that systematically undermines state sovereignty through military and economic means. The guest scholar defines imperialism as a system that organizes international relations to benefit imperial powers by diminishing the sovereignty of others, distinguishing it from direct colonial rule. Sovereignty is explained as having two layers: quantitative control over territory and the qualitative form of social and economic life within it. The conversation argues that capitalist imperialism is foundational to capitalism itself, emerging simultaneously to resolve capitalism's internal contradictions by forcibly extracting resources and underpaying labor in the periphery. The current tensions with Iran are thus positioned not as an isolated conflict but as a key front in a larger struggle over development models and sovereignty in the Global South during a renewed era of geopolitical confrontation.
[Music] The Islamic Revolution challenges. At the moment that the United States started had one history that is coming into the end of its history, challenges the military basis and the economic basis of imperialism. The Islamic Revolution is a material and ethical challenge to a US imperialism that had drained wealth continuing the tradition of British imperialism, drained wealth from a majority world through violence and that are underdeveloped and redeveloped those territories. So it's about trying to restore a sovereignty that can allow for a dignified form of development. You are listening to upstream upstream upstream upstream a show about political economy and society that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you. I'm Dela Duncan and I'm Robert Raymond. Like almost all anti-imperialist revolutions of the 20th century, the Iranian Revolution has been subject to an economic and military onslaught by the United States and the Imperial Block at Leeds. This onslaught as we explored last episode has primarily taken the form of economic strangulation in Iran. But when that didn't work as intended, outright military violence was introduced. And this war cannot be reduced to a deranged United States president, nor is it an inclination to bring democracy to Iran, far from it. The war is a fight over the direction of development for the global south in the 21st century and it's just another front in the second cold war between the United States and, well, the rest of the world. In this episode, part three of our series on Iran were joined by Bikram Gil for a conversation exploring sovereignty and imperialism in Iran. Bikram Gil is a faculty in political science and international relations and a scholar of international political economy. He's the author of the political ecology of colonial capitalism, race, nature, and accumulation published by Manchester University Press. And before we get started, upstream is entirely listener-funded, no ads, no promotions, no grants, just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for biweekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalogue of Patreon episodes, and for stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support, you'll be helping us keep upstream sustainable and helping keep this whole project going. Post-capitalist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Bikram Gil. All right, Bikram, thank you so much for joining us on such Norton or is on such short notice. Well, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. Very smooth start on my end. I'd love it if to start if you could introduce yourself for our listeners and just maybe talk a little bit about the work that you do. Sure. So I'm a faculty in political science and international relations. I am a scholar more broadly of international political economy. So within that, I do development studies. I look at the agrarian question, the relationship between agriculture and development. I've done a lot of stuff on the climate crisis, and I think my approach is one that really centers imperialism as a primary kind of question that structures the world system, and maybe imperialism versus sovereignty as a primary contradiction or tension. The structures, all those questions I mentioned, whether it's agriculture and development in the south, whether it's a climate crisis, whether it's economic development more broadly, right? And I think increasingly, I'm thinking about the relationship between sovereignty and development. And yeah, I can say, I've not promoted it at all. So this is probably the most I've ever promoted it because obviously, we've been living through this horrific genocide. It feels weird to promote anything, but I published a book in the fall of 2024. This is my first time ever mentioning it. So I'm doing it on your program that I published a book titled the Political Ecology of Colonial Capitalism, Race, Nature and Accumulation. That book will have a lot of my kind of theoretical approach to some of these questions there. Amazing. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that into it to, we'll link to that in the show notes. And yeah, I'm sure that a lot of that book will kind of be talked about today, even though we're not explicitly talking about that book, we're talking more about what's going on in Iran. But maybe I'd like to start with some basic building blocks just to kind of help orient ourselves in the conversation. We've had on a variety of different guests to discuss imperialism more broadly. We've spoken about, of course, Lenin's work imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism with Brett O'Shea and Allison Escalante Red Menace. We've had John Smith on for discussion on his book Capitalism in the 21st century. We've had Michaela Nando Erskogon to talk about this concept of hyper imperialism in the context of the Alliance of Sahel States, but also just more broadly this idea of hyper imperialism, those outlined by Tri-continental. So just putting that out there to say that our listeners have had a long exposure to imperialism on our show. And it's various theorizations. But I'm wondering if you can share with us your understanding of imperialism. Like what do you mean when you talk about imperialism and when you utilize it as a concept and how it's connected interestingly, because you've spoken about this too, how it's connected to capitalism and colonialism. Okay, so what I will do is, yeah, I think let me first like in the way you asked it, discuss what I understand by imperialism, then I'll come to capitalism and I'll come back to imperialism because there's something specific of imperialism of the capitalist sort. This is what we say capitalist imperialism and I'm happy with the way you frame the question because colonialism and imperialism as I've been discussing over the past couple of years is they are related but they're distinct. And it matters, that distinction matters and we're going to see especially for the relationship between Zionism and imperialism. That's going to be an important distinction and relation and how they both relate to capitalism. So let me begin with imperialism broadly generally. So I understand imperialism to be a structure and I'll explain what that means in a moment but it's a structure that determines how societies interact with each other. So we are individuals but of course we live on a planet that has many multiple societies. So the question of international relations, maybe planetary relations is not simply a question of individuals encountering one another, but of societies encountering one another. Of societies that are often organized into forms of power or political community that today we call states. So imperialism is a structure that determines how societies and states interact with one another. So now when we can think about structure this is different than the classical realist international relations understanding which is energy which will say that states exist in a structure of energy. So a structure determines how you will behave. This is why a structural analysis is important. You can look at behaviors but that might miss the structural question of what is shaping them. So now anarchy the realist will say shapes states interaction because there's no supra state. There's no supra software. So in this context it's a war of all against all. The question becomes how do you find order amongst sovereign states when there's no supra sovereign to enforce that order and this will lead to things like the balance of power and et cetera. This structural analysis, the international system is however rather Eurocentric rather Western century. The way that I understand the international system in the modern era it's been structured by imperialism. So this is one amongst many possible structure or structural forms that will structure the interaction of societies and states with one another. So imperialism and contrast to anarchy is a structure that systematically organizes relations between states in such a way that denies or diminishes the sovereignty of some or many or the majority of those states and the interests of the imperial powers or the imperial power. So it's a systematic relationship. This important I'll come back to that in a moment. It's not a one to one relationship. It's not simply colonized or colonized. It's systematic. It's systematic and we'll think about what the purpose of that systematic relation is in relation to capitalism momentarily. So it's this sort of a structure. So that does something different to the questions we ask. So anarchy for realist poses the question how do you establish order amongst satan states? If we put imperialism there the question becomes well who is even sovereign? Who can be sovereign? That's the prior question that putting imperialism first puts forward. So now like I was mentioning it's not the same thing as outright territorial conquest either. Imperialism does not require territorial conquest. Colonialism does, colonialism is about territorial conquest. Now there's different types of colonialism. There's settler colonialism, right? And there's more of the colonialism of the kind of the British Rajan India. Now colonialism is territorial one to one
colonial rule, it can be a component of imperialism, a necessary component. But like I said, imperialism is better understood as a broader system. This broader system can be regional, but imperialism of the sort we will discuss today is concerned with the planetary or world systemic scale. It encompasses the entire state system and it has historically. So that's how I understand imperialism, maybe generally. And now how does imperialism emerge? How does it function to deny systematically sovereignty or the Miner's sovereignty? So there's two basis of imperialism, military and economic. So this is very important because when we get to Iran today, we'll see what is Iran's sin? Is that it's challenging those two bases through which sovereignty is denied on a systemic basis? So the first is military. Military power usurps sovereignty by applying greater force over a delineated territory. So an external power will apply greater force and denier diminished the sovereignty of whoever was ruling that territory before. And you can do it through economics. And for Iran, this is very obviously important as well how sanctions can be deployed as a way to deny and contain the sovereignty of a state. And so military power may seem quite self evident how that works. Economic power, it is such that a state may be territoryly sovereign, but it's not able to control the flow of economic goods into and out of its territory. And that can constrain its policy choices, that can transform its options, it can restrain its sovereignty. So I just want to take a moment if it's okay just to briefly pause to elaborate on what I understand by sovereignty just very quickly because it's necessary to understand this denial or diminishment of sovereignty which is really key to imperialism. So sovereignty, what I would like people to just think about is what it really entails is who holds decision making power or what holds decision making power over a clearly delineated territory. So there is a quantitative basis to sovereignty. So you can have a quantitative basis which means essentially who has the most military force in a territory. That's the basis of who can decide. And now that force also projects outward to other sovereigns to force them to recognize your sovereignty. That's one basis, another basis of sovereignty is something a little deeper perhaps which is a qualitative form of sovereignty. And a key question also of the state system is how do sovereigns come to recognize one another. So you can hold it in your territory but you need other sovereigns to recognize you as a legitimate sovereigns, otherwise they can very well overwhelm you or seek to impose themselves. Now that often is related to of course we can think about material interests but it might be do you recognize the legitimacy of the form of life in that territory. So we can understand if it's a capitalist form of sovereignty and it's run by a capitalist logic will they recognize another state if they introduce a form of life that's built on nationalization of resources or will they understand that to be a delegitimization of sovereignty so they don't recognize it. So that form of life is a second level of sovereignty a deeper level a qualitative form. Now why do I say it's deeper because this is what that quantitative form ultimately seeks to defend. You're not simply defending power for power's sake but what is it that's underneath it. This is a relationship that exists in that territory how people organize their relations with one another in relation to land and their resources and their cosmological understanding. So this is a meaning making question the meaning of life in that territory and the reproduction of that form of life. Now that is very significant because that is where decision making power can be rooted it draws out of that but the will to defend comes out of that too. So there's a qualitative and a quantitative form and I think it's important to remember that because we can't understand Gaza we can't understand Lebanon we can't understand Iran we can't understand so much of the anti colonial anti imperial struggles without understanding what's at stake in terms of the qualitative basis of sovereignty. So now you have these different forms of life these different form qualitative forms of sovereignty and societies and states encounter one another. And I'm going to just briefly before returning to imperialism then I'll come back to capitalism just one thing I want to mention is that somebody who's very influential on me France Fanon it not in wretched the earth which is the text I refer to most often but in this earlier text black skin white masks. He poses a distinction in terms of encounter when people encounter one another when societies encounter one another there is an opportunity to encounter one another through a gift or through conquest. So in different forms of life suppose another part of the human stories migration and travel when you encounter another you can host another by provisioning a gift right and and and that gift is how you have reproduced your land and you help others survive on that land. So this is the gift but there's another movement that Fanon counter poses to the gift which is conquest so maybe I'm introducing that just so folks and think about the difference between say when the Europeans might arrive on the shores of the Caribbean and they survive because of the gift that the title provision and that gift is because the title form of life created fertile soil. And then they share that wealth and that knowledge but the Spaniards respond with the movement of conquest Fanon would say right so these different forms of life different sovereign forms that exist necessarily because the planet is diverse so our societies will be diverse so the opposed the question how how do we encounter one another now let me just put that there for the second for the side on imperialism and sovereignty let's come to now think about how this relates to capitalism. So capitalism not the imperialism that is exist today is the capitalist sort capitalism is a system that is premised upon primitive accumulation or enclosure okay so this is built upon the dispossession of the working class and it creates enclosure creates a proletariat dispossessed working class and an ownership class which is the capitalist class which is a profit seeking ownership class and it runs entirely on market based competition that's why we produce things to generate profit out of the market right now the problem though is this relation is contradictory and it's actually irrational in a way and I know that's going to sound counterintuitive but it's irrational because markets don't work properly if the majority of people have lost all assets then they can't compete properly on the market right so there's something irrational there but the main contradiction is between profits and wages so this dispossessed class must get its wages from the market from selling us labor on the market entirely but by selling us labor on the market the capitalist class wants to repress its wages now by repressing its wages it gets more profits but now it's reduced its market size those workers don't have as much income now to buy goods on the market okay so how do you resolve this contradiction higher profits repress wages reduce market size is going to reduce the value of production this is where imperialism has been absolutely necessary to stabilize this contradiction okay so it's a imperialism helps stabilize it because it reduces wage the price of wage goods it reduces the price of industrial inputs okay because now if the labor in the core reproducing it is the contradiction for capital how do you reproduce an entirely dispossessed class you've got to make sure it's eats it has shelter all this stuff but it has no means of getting that besides the market so how do you reduce those costs well you can do so through basically appropriating those type of goods from the colony and the imperial periphery so what that means is you were wanting to under reproduce labor in the colony in the periphery you're wanting to under reproduce resources which means when I take cotton or if I take say palm oil I'm not concerned with reproducing the land that generated that or reproducing the people and I will pay them less than what they need to repress the price of the property they need to reproduce their lives I will under reproduce them and that requires a denial of sovereignty on a national basis on a total basis right so and maybe your viewers or listeners are are used are familiar with Ali cadre's work you can think about this concept of under reproduction is similar to what he calls okay so you're appropriating resources that prices below the labor that was required to produce them right now this can only happen with the diminishment of sovereignty so this suggests on the one hand that capitalism's contradictions lead to imperialism which is the position of western Marxism and even to be on a some third world Marxist but it's one with which I disagree capitalism would have never consolidated as a system without imperialism so it's not capitalism emerges and there's this contradiction and it requires imperialism they emerge together at the same time you have primitive accumulation in Europe happening at the same time as colonialism is happening in the Americas and elsewhere and so it's they emerge together but it is imperialism that is the foundation without imperialism those capitalist relations would have never stabilized and become expansionary they would have collapsed on their own contradiction so they emerge together is one thing I will say about the relationship between the two now I want to take a minute to talk about this relationship their contemporary emergence with one another and especially how imperialism is the prior relationship in a way because this will really help us understand what just happened in Iran I believe so the violent basis of capitalist imperialism like I mentioned before imperialism is founded on military violence and economic violence so the moment of capitalist imperialism we go back to the 60s
or again, you have an encounter, as I was mentioning before, between sovereigns, between societies. And you have this, maybe like Phonon might say, this movement between a gift and a conquest. At this moment, European colonizers, the Spanish in particular, they actually reject the possibility of rational dialogue between two societies. Rational dialogue might look like how do two forms of life come to coexist with one another? How can they maybe through rational dialogue and debate come to develop either new cultural forms or figure out a way of coexistence? But the Spaniards, as we know, reject that, and they choose outright genocidal violence. And that violence becomes the basis of treaties with indigenous people. So when you hear Trump talking about, I'm going to smash you or sign the line. He's not interested in discourse, the same thing with Biden. This is what motivates the escalation of the genocide after Alexa Flood. They are simply trying to return to their violent basis to say any sort of treaty or framework has to happen on this basis, where we will either kill you or you agree to our structuring demands. So that's the basis of capitalist imperialism. This is why you'll see this again and again. Well, we're negotiating with you. We're not actually negotiating. They're just trying to renew the basis of imperialism as well. So now this is maybe capitalism and imperialism. I want to talk about the distinction between colonialism and imperialism and how they relate to one another. So as I mentioned, colonialism is a direct one-to-one basis. And imperialism is the systematic relationship of core and periphery, which the colony can serve. The colony can be a part of imperialism, but imperialism can function even after decolonization. You can have territorial independence, but you're still locked into systematic imperial relations that drain wealth, that underreproduce your labor, underreproduce your territory in the service of the imperial core. So what matters most to imperialism here? Let me provide a definition of imperialism in contradiction to colonialism, especially under capitalism. What matters most to imperialism is not territorial control, which is colonialism. What matters most to imperialism is control over the flow of capital and resources between territories. That is pivotal. That's what's going to create economic dependency. So if you have achieved sovereignty over your territory, but you have no way of accessing capital and technology and markets through which you can develop your resources and have national development, that's going to lead to dependency. It's going to lead to a loss of sovereignty and a value drain. And so under imperialism, it doesn't actually matter necessarily who owns the resource. The United States does not need to own your oil, but it needs to control the entry and exit of the oil, either out of your territory and into another, and then the reentry of capital to your territory. We're seeing this in Venezuela very clearly. And I think another very important historical example would be the opium wars. Like the opium wars are essentially the imperial powers using violence to transform the relationship with China. Who will control the flow of capital and goods into and out of China? That's why Hong Kong was such a pivotal choke point. It didn't matter if they had territorial control over all of China. What matters is that they maintained a price setting power, which allowed them to drain the value of goods. And we can think about the terrafores and everything today in that way. Now, although they're distinct, colonialism and imperialism do work together necessarily. So the colonizer historically has been the unrestrained, unregulated tip of the spear or the unrestrained, unregulated component of imperialism. That's necessary to introduce and maintain the terror through which the development and under reproduction and the drain of wealth becomes possible. So think about the settler in the frontier, how they operate without right unregulated violence. This is the role that colonialism may play, but colonialism then introduces a contradiction, the settler. It can destabilize the whole system, right, because it doesn't allow for any sort of stabilization if the imperial power seeks at a moment to stabilize relations either with those they're colonizing or with neighboring states, because the settler so unregulated necessarily to introduce that denial of sovereignty. So now that that contradiction can be resolved in a couple of ways. So if you have a decolonization that leaves in place imperialism, so if the settler is unrestrained and unregulated, the people of the territory like in Algeria, you can kick out the settler, right, but then your imperialism remains in place or the settler can win like the Americans do against British imperialism. The settler, like France, went on arguing with the earth, the settler transforms imperialism into an even greater monster. This is not to say imperialism was ever good, it's not. It's just that the settler colonial component of it radicalizes and further deepens and intensifies its genocidal logic, right. And that's why I think we can come back to it later on, but I think that's one way to understand the relationship between Zionism and imperialism today. It's not about Zionism controlling the American government or even the American government using Zionism as a proxy. That may have been how it started in the 1970s, but it's about this intermesh relationship where maybe Zionism is transforming the imperial body today as well. So yeah, I think that's kind of maybe how I would understand. That's a very long answer. I'm sure you were not expecting that for answer to what, but that's it was a big question and I think it'll help us maybe set the frame for the rest of the discussion. Maybe I'll just conclude it by saying bringing it together on capitalism, because this will come to some of the later points in the discussion. So the problem for it is that it's founded in dispossession, both at home and in the calling. And it's ruled by a prophecy in capitalist class. A more rational system could generate wealth in more sustaining ways that do not require this denial of sovereignty, such as China's system today. China's system today is not built on a universal dispossession of land. In fact, it's built on the opposite. This is why China's been able to offer something else to the world and why the imperialism is targeting it. So intensely, and we can argue perhaps Iran as well is built on a different structural basis. So yeah. All right. Well, yeah, no, thank you so much for all of that. I think it's super, super important for us to kind of orient ourselves towards what you are explicitly going to be unpacking in the conversation that we're about to have on more so focused on Iran. And like I said, we've had a lot of different discussions about imperialism. So it's helpful to know exactly what your perspective is when you use these different terms. I'm going to ask you to answer quite a what might sound like a very basic question. But I think a lot of liberal analysis and when when we're sort of absorbing a lot of what comes out of the mainstream, it just simply ignores when analyzing what's happening right now. The US is really war on Iran, which is what exactly are we talking about when we talk about Iranian sovereignty and why is it such a threat to the United States? And I know you kind of talked a little bit about this already in your first question and maybe a little bit more of a theoretical realm. But maybe if we could dive just a little bit deeper into this specific example and unpack what's going on there. Okay, so yeah, it's going to take a little while to work through this as well because maybe it's a simple question, but it's a big question because I think to understand what we're talking about when we talk about Iranian sovereignty and particularly why it's such a threat to the United States, then we have to understand US imperialism. And we have to understand the particular historical moment of US imperialism when the Islamic revolution happens. So like that's something I think we can work through it slowly if necessary, but I think it's important like you're saying so just to repeat so sovereignty again when we talk about Iranian sovereignty sovereignty means it's about territorial control, but it's also about the flow of resources in capital into and out of a territory. Okay, this is really pivotal and it's also about a form of life. Okay, so let's think about those three registers. The Islamic revolution in 1979 constitutes and it's a revolution that's ongoing. So I think in hindsight, we will understand revolutionary periods are not one two three years. Okay, so we're still in the context of 1979 we're still living in this time. So it's a reassertion of sovereignty on both of those grounds territorial and the flow of resources in capital into and out of Iran and the third one that form of life it's a reassertion of sovereignty and because of that it threatens the US imperial order. So I'm going to come back to Iran momentarily, but let's think about that US imperial order. US imperialism really consolidates in the post-war era. Now there's a much longer history of US imperialism. You know, we can go to the Philippines, we can go to Cuba, we can go to the Spanish American war, even you can go to the US quote unquote war of independence and what it meant for its relation with indigenous peoples, but it really consolidates and becomes the imperialism post-World War II. And in fact, Iran at that time plays a really key part of this consolidation. So the primary resource that matters in the 20th century capitalist world economy is oil. Oil is going to power the entire industrial economy. Every good is going to be indexed to the price of oil, the control of the oil is pitiful. And so when the United States is left standing after World War II as the only major economic power, you know, Soviet Union will rapidly come on to compete with it, but so we all other countries pay a major price.
cost in World War II. The United States doesn't because it's protected by those two oceans, right? The Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean. So it comes out very strongly. And because of maybe that strength, the United States is the primary force that actually is hostile to any idea of international law, even post World War II. It speaks about international law, but it really behaves in a much more way that where it imposes itself through force. This has always been the case. There was something else that was possible after World War II. There was a different world that could have come into being if the demands of decolonization were taken more seriously. So US imperialism consolidates after World War II. Now what's one opening moment of US imperialism? Well, as we all know, in Iran in 1953, in the early 1950s, as elsewhere, the call across the third world was sovereignty, not just in name, not just in identity, but material over resources. And in Iran, there's a movement to reclaim sovereignty. And what this means is real economic sovereignty over oil wealth and not simply controlling oil, right? But also controlling and getting a fair price for the sale of oil in the world market and the recycling of that wealth back into Iran for the purposes of Iranian national development. Now we know what happens there. We know the United States conducts a coup d'etat working with the British intelligence agencies because it was the Anglo-American oil company, of course, that most of the leader of Iran at the time was trying to nationalize. Which is now BP. Yeah, which is now BP precisely. So this is a moment in which now the United States doesn't go in and take over Iran, actually, right? It comes in obviously the Shah of Iran is kind of maybe into a proxy or a vessel or a compredor, however you want to understand it, but they don't have territorial control. But they certainly have not lost control over the flow of oil. Now Iran might seem to have sovereign control, but they will do nothing with that oil that's independent of US interests, right? After that. So now that's not just the only thing that happens. The next year what happens is Yakovar Benz is overthrown. And all he was trying to do was a reassert sovereign control over land that wasn't even being used properly by US fruit companies in Guatemala. Right? And then the US conducts a long proxy war, at least to a massive civil war. Again, they don't go in and colonize Guatemala. And you can't anymore because of the history of decolonization of the 20th century. So it matters. The great anti-colonial struggles changed how imperialism could function in the 20th century. So US imperialism doesn't go for direct territorial control because it can't because of the success of the Chinese revolution, the Soviet Union and the Cuban revolution. Right? What do they do to Cuba? They put sanctions on Cuba. Again, because Cuba's sin is that it nationalizes resources and it redistributes land. It takes land that's held by US plantation companies, fruit companies and it redistributes those. So they're challenging the very basis of imperialism. Now the United States then in the 20th century will always intervene when there's a threat to the control over the flow of resources. Right? So this is a rule. But what really to understand the Islamic revolution and sovereignty of the Islamic Republic and the threat opposes, we have to understand what happens in the 1970s to capitalism. And we have to understand what happens to capitalism and what happens in West Asia in particular. So in the 1970s, by the 1970s, the contradictions of capitalism have really escalated in the post-war era. So you have increasing competition amongst capitals. So capitalist firms on a national basis are actually competing with one another. So you have German and Japanese and American firms increasingly competing with one another and eating into one another's profits and actually US firms are losing in this competition. So they're being German and Japanese automotive engineering are out competing American and it introduces a crisis of profitability, an over-accumulation crisis. So there is nowhere for a capital to reinvest where it can realize more profits. Because you're having these saturated markets, you're having this intensified competition and then that other contradiction we spoke of before is also intensifying. Labor is strong, unions are strong, wages are high. So all of these are converging to create this crisis of over-accumulation and profitability and one key way that the United States overcomes this is through projecting power in West Asia. So I won't go into too much detail on this. I have elsewhere and people can go look into this but a key moment happens here and this is the relationship between imperialism and Zionism is in 1973 of course the 1973 war, the young Kippur War and during this war the United States plays a pivotal role in massively airlifting weapons to Israel through which it's able to roll back the gains that Egypt and Syria had made. Through this projection of power the United States is able to establish itself as the ultimate security guarantor in the region and by doing so it's able to shift Egypt from the Soviet sphere to the American sphere and it's able to project a power through which it's able to consolidate a relationship between oil and the dollar. So what this means is now we have the emergence of the petrodollar. We have an arrangement with golf states that they will sell their oil in US dollars. That means the Germans and the Japanese might outcompete the Americans but they have to buy their oil in US dollars which means they have to keep the US dollars or reserve currency which is going to introduce a financial monetary power for the United States and sorry I should say it wasn't just Germany in Japan that was the problem southern states in the global south were also industrialized. So this means anybody who's eating into profitability of US dollars now you have a whole US dollars this is going to introduce a financial monetary power but the United States will project an exercise in the 1980s through structural adjustment and so on right through which they're going to drain interest payments the emergence of financial capitalism let's say in the 1970s is really built upon the power of the US dollar which is backed by oil which is backed by military power okay and Israel and Zionism is a key projection of power here and not only this it also introduces a new mode of accumulation so it's not just that you the United States jumps out of real production in the 1970s goes into the finance and it goes to Wall Street road it also goes into militarized accumulation it starts to generate profits through war and again the relationship with Zionism is pivotal to this so you have a transformation or some sort of growth in a particular direction of US capitalism in the 1970s and at the base of it is this military power in West Asia and it is projected through like we were talking about colonialism this unrestrained unregulated Zionist power okay so it's it's this leading force through which it is necessary for the United States to be able to maintain they don't need to own the oil fields in Saudi but they need to make sure they maintain sovereign control over how that oil flows to the world economy and then the other component of this so so the United States is consolidating its capitalism periodism and Zionism through this is able to start to project more power against the Palestinians so we should obviously go to the saying that Israel is a settler calling it it's built upon the theft of Palestinian land and the genocide of Palestinians from 1948 until today and even earlier so they escalate their war against Palestinian resistance also at this time so not only is the United States established military and economic power in West Asia through Zionism and its relationship with Zionism Zionism is able to deepen its colonial hold over the Palestinians it's able to by 1982 it starts to attack and eliminate and weaken Palestinian armed resistance okay so I haven't mentioned this but a key component of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism is the ability to challenge a military basis of that power so that's guerrilla warfare armed resistance without that you're begging for your sovereignty that is the real way for you to reclaim sovereign power so the Islamic revolution happens at a point in history where it looks like you know the United States has established false spectrum dominance the Soviet unions entering into decline this equation in West Asia to spoke about it seems like you're having the seemingly collapse or the end of the PLO armed struggle so this is where the Islamic revolution enters and it's a revolution that we have to understand that is not coming out of the sky okay it's not coming out of nowhere it's coming out of this experience of what happens in 1953 of being denied sovereign control over its resources right of being denied sovereign control even the the question of the form of life in Iran right we know under the Shah different forms of Islamic expression were severely repressed right so we have a westernization of Iran that's happening we have a loss of control over resources that happens and this is understood by the protagonist of the Islamic revolution as a state of humiliation it's a state of basically having surrendered and bowing down to a foreign power okay so this is like what's fueling and motivating it but what's also distinct is the Islamic revolution is not simply a national question of restoring sovereign power over the resources of the Iranian territory it understands that the sovereignty of Iran is inextricably linked to the rest of the region and potentially the whole world right so this is why the revolution is not simply about establishing independence and sovereign integrity for Iran but about defeating Zionism in the region and defeating US imperialism regionally and it really centers the Palestinians struggle for that reason on one level now on a deeper level and I
I have to mention a really brilliant scholar on his bullet and the access to resistance more generally, Amal Sad. She's been working in thinking a lot of her works on his bullet. She's been thinking about Iran more recently. And in addition to what I've spoken about right now, she's been thinking about the significance of the theological grounding of the Islamic Revolution. So in the sense that it's not simply that it is very significant to roll that Palestine plays for the achievement of regional sovereignty. You know, Aragchi, the foreign minister, just a couple of weeks ago, again, came back to the centrality of Palestine. The Palestine is the primary question. But there is also another basis that, you know, I was talking to Amal recently, and she was saying that in the constitution of the Islamic Republic, there's a commitment to fighting on the side of the oppressed everywhere wherever they are. Right? There's a commitment in the constitution is shriened to opposition to imperialism or form power even having a military base. Whether it's Soviet Union, Russia, or the United States, like no military base in Iran, right? So there's a deeper kind of commitment to a sense of dignity, to a sense of fighting for justice that I don't know much about myself, but what I'm learning is that this is rooted in a certain set of shia principles and a certain understanding of the history of a say, a Karbala mode of sovereignty that's oriented towards justice and so forth, right? And so this is something that I think is very distinct. But what all of this means is that the Islamic Revolution challenges at the moment that the United States started had one history that is coming into the end of history, challenges the military basis and the economic basis of imperialism in the region. It's going to challenge that oil and dollar relationship by insisting on sovereign control or oil resources and insisting on total regional sovereignty. It challenges the military basis because at the very moment that there's an all-out attack on the PLO, you have the Islamic Republic entering in as a source of strategic depth, as a source of military cooperation, of knowledge, that fusion, of technical and practical cooperation with resistance forces in the region, which is what enables a reconstitution of armed struggle in the region, right? It's not like, and I would agree with Amal and others would say that his bullet is not a proxy of Iran, but nonetheless, it is the case that they move, and we're going to talk about this later perhaps, but they move together and Iran provides a key source of strategic military and economic depth to those who continue to resist. So I think the challenge that it posed to US imperialism at this moment was that it reasserted sovereign control over its territory. It challenged the ability of imperialism to control, have sovereign control over the flow of oil across the world economy. It challenged and refused to accept the genocidal conquest of Palestine, understanding it both in material terms, but in more qualitative terms, whether it's theological, whether it's ethical, I mean, the illogical is ethical, but in those sort of terms, it understood all of those and it launched a material challenge to it. And that's what we under have to understand. The Islamic revolution is a material and ethical challenge to a US imperialism that had drained, wealth, continuing the tradition of British imperialism, drained wealth from the majority world through violence and that are underdeveloped and de-developed those territories. So it's about trying to restore a sovereignty that can allow for a dignified form of development to all peoples. I'm glad you brought up that piece about the centrality of like justice and the Islamic Republic being oriented. So specifically towards Palestinian liberation, I want to bring in a quote from a piece that you've written that I was looking at when I was doing a little bit of research for this episode, which you sent me. So you've written about what Iran could have looked like if it had normalized relationships with the US and Israel like many other Gulf states have done in West Asia. And if it had cut ties with Hezbollah and Hamas, for example, and the answer is simple. So you write quote, Iran could rapidly become one of the wealthiest and most developed states in the world, owing to its combination of hydrocarbon wealth, a large, highly skilled and educated population, and its favorable location for international trade. It would be praised in Western media as a quote moderate state and not a quote regime. It would enjoy trade deals for an investment and the full benefits of integration into the global economy. But as you write, these Islamic Republic shows a different path and this is specifically because it's orientation towards solidarity with Palestinians and justice. I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to add to that. Yeah, I think so. It's a really good question as to the why. And I think the real door to answer that question would be answered, opened by people in Iran and in the Islamic Republic, I think who understand it much more deeply than I would. But I think what I would just say is, you know, the other path seems much easier. So why would they? You know, like I really understood when I wrote that. Iran could be far wealthier than Saudi Arabia. And I think it's very funny when that point about a moderate state, not a regime like you never hear anybody talk about Saudi Arabia as a regime. It's reserved for the enemies of imperialism. So why would they forego potential so much wealth and endure so much suffering, right? And which divides the society? I think we have to remember if we go back to Mao's question on contradiction. Yeah, there are divisions in Iran, but the primary force that generates those is imperialism. Because the Islamic revolution has never been given a chance. Just like Cuban revolution was never given a chance to develop in the way that it might have. It was immediately put under sanctions and war from the outset, right? So why would it not take the so-called easier road? Because I would say on the first instance, on one level, on the structural or technical level, you know, it's true that if Iran was to become like Japan or Saudi or something like this, you know, and subordinate itself entirely to the dictates of imperialism, it would be wealthy. But it would have been at the cost of the real basis of its sovereignty, even on a technical level. So you see, Japan was, let's take the example of Japan. Japan was accelerated. In the 1980s, there was an assumption, not to the extent that the way China is spoken about today, there was some reference that Japan was going to outstrip the United States, right? In 1970, the United States simply imposes the plaza accords on Japan. And it says, you have to adjust your currency in the way that we demanded you. And since the 1990s, Japan's economy is instinct. You know, it's simply got put in its place. So even if it benefits you, it's always going to limit how far you can go. And similar thing happens with South Korea and the Asian Tigers in the late 1990s. You have a financial crisis that comes as largely engineered by US hedge funds, right? By US Vulture funds. And so like, this is a way in which you may be granted wealth, but it can also be taken where undermined at any time. And I think the experience, host most of that in 1953 had a profound impact. But not just this, I do think, and I'm not the one to talk about it, but the impact of what a model is calling the Karvala model of sovereignty, right? This idea of fighting for a just world, of awaiting for the return of the Imam, the hidden Imam, to bring justice to this world. This also, I think, is something that really drives the leadership of the Islamic Republic. You know, like I think there's been debates recently about Iran capitalist or not. But I think one thing that's really important is that the governance structure of the Islamic Republic is that it has its constitution at its head, you know, a learned leader, a deeply learned jurist, right? A deeply learned class that elects the leader. And this leader is informed by a certain set of ethics, right? That refuses an undignified humiliated life. So I think that's something that we have to also keep in mind. There's something of the structural and technical level, but there's also something at an ethical or theological level. And I think that's where we can understand that Iran has abandoned Palestine because they feel a sense of religious duty to the liberation of Palestine, the liberation of Al-Aqsa, the liberation of Al-Quds. You know, so these are, I think, very important things to keep in mind as to why I didn't choose that path. Your listening to an upstream conversation with Bikram Gil will be right back. I can't wait to hear what this one's for. I can't wait to find out what we'll win. Bring you to an end, set it up the score. I promise you, as a sweet democracy, raining down like bullets in the breeze. Another award, hear that progress knocking at your door.
Terrorists and savages, but where will bomb you till you free? Starve you till you're fairer? Another war, but after this there won't be any more 'Cause finally the whole world will be free just like you need I've made a shop and it can't be stored No little people of the world can't cheer 'em scream and out to sing Promises of sweet democracy, raining down like bullets and debris Finally the whole world will be free just like you need That was another war by Carsey Blanton, now back to our conversation with Bikram Gill So let's hop in a little bit more deeply into sort of what's going on currently right now All of our phone screens are basically just images of what's going on in Iran Stories about what's going on in Cuba, Venezuela, Lebanon And this question that we're talking about, it's not limited to Iran, right? It's limited to all of these states that are in some way shape or form trying to exercise sovereignty What is the US's calculus right now in terms of all of these different wars and conflicts? I think most people are used to hearing about, you know, most mainstream outlets More so progressive or on the left might be talking about the Gussano lobby or this or that inclination that Trump has When I listen to democracy now, it's a lot of trying to get into Trump's head And you know, we know that capitalism is a force that works through individuals of course But there are much deeper processes that are taking place So maybe if we could talk a little bit about in your perspective What is the thread that ties together Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. And what is the US's goal here? Yeah, so I think that's a good way that you framed it because it's hard not to focus on individual personalities right now Especially because of Trump And you know, I think there's a way in which the whole Epstein, like I guess exposure, leads people that way But it need not because and maybe we'll have time to talk about this later on or not but you know, the Epstein framework Where people call the Epstein regime actually is a logical outgrowth of that capitalist imperialism that we spoke about right So it is also systematic, it's not an individual, I think the way you put it, it's not like it's not a curiosity or an inclination of individuals It is systematic right so now why is it doing right now? I would I know you may have a question later on about China, but I'm not going to introduce China here as well I think that's a part of understanding the US calculus, so I think at the one level at a base level It goes back to what I've been talking about imperialism is the United States is looking to reassert control over the flow of capital and resources between territories They're not necessarily seeking to take over territories and they're seeking to do so in a particular setting A setting which is shifting that structure we started off by talking about imperialism There's a structural challenge to imperialism today and it's coming, let's say for simplicity's sake, it's coming from two interrelated forces One, I think it's fair to isolate China to say that the rise of China is such a world historic force, it's transforming the world system on such a scale And China is an anti-imperialist force, it's challenging imperialism at its basis and it's out competing in the United States The United States simply cannot compete with them, that might remind us of 1970s, but we'll see there's something different about China It's not Japan and Germany either, it's not the same form of competition there, it is very different Because of the different structural basis of the Chinese state And then the other thing that is compromising US imperialism is related to what I just talked about But it's the way in which, say Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, the states you mentioned, maybe Zimbabwe The democratic peoples of the Republic of Korea, other states that are under sanctions, the way in which they have actually responded to sanctions The contradiction of imperialism today, it deepens their cooperation with one another And they are asserting greater control over the flow of resources in their relations with one another So that both of those are eating into them the power of imperialism And it's going to eat into their profits So I think this is the primary motive because in which standing imperialism and charting more independent relations between one another They reduce their dependency on US imperialism So you know if Cuba sends doctors to Venezuela and Venezuela is provisioning oil And you know you have these different type of relations emerging, they're breaking the chains of dependence Which is increasing their sovereign space, but that's disrupting the flow of surplus value through the imperial core Which is going to bring capitalism to a crisis, which is going to generate more inflationary pressures in the capitalist core To control inflation, you need to make sure you have an imperialist prop as per both it's a pednetic of our agreed So I think there's a challenge they're facing and they're trying to restore something in attacking Iran and Cuba and Venezuela Now Cuba, I would say it's like an anchor since 1959, right? It's like something that maybe it's been isolated But it acts as a constant anchor whenever they're in the region especially there are attempts or movements that are rupt to reclaim sovereignty Cuba is always there as an anchor to provide solidarity, to provide a model, etc. And I would say the other thing that Cuba threatens the United States about is in a similar way the Haitian revolution in the 19th century Cuba stands as a model on the doorstep of America, the life can be very different, right? You don't have to go bankrupt when you get sick, right? You don't have to work your whole life and not be able to get basic goods So that's why they want to fail the Cuban project but also because Cuba can transform the relations between states, right? It's an anchor in that way So I'll come back to that in a second but I think one key element that the United States is working against here is China Now China has a superior economic system, it's much more rational It has a market system, it has actually a much more rational market system than the United States We need to look no further than the rapid advance of its electric vehicle sector in the last six, seven years Really through a state-led approach, through a planned approach, how they shifted a glut of capital out of the real estate sector into sectors at the leading edge of the economy now and the combination of a state-led approach with I think introducing markets in a particular way has made China much more rational and much more productive than Western economies They build out infrastructure in a more rational way They have a composite economy where that is planned, that direct resources in a more rational way So they have been producing and then China over time has been moving up the value chain producing higher value technologies Even now they are the world leader in capital goods production which Germany used to be They're producing semiconductor chips, in other words China is moving to the commanding heights of the world economy So that matters because you know even you can industrialize But what really matters is the commanding heights, so if you control the semiconductor machines or the lithography machines Then you still can impose dependency on other states Because you might produce capital goods but you still need these core technologies And China is challenging those on all those levels And they're out competing the West, they're more rational, less wasteful Now this might sound similar to the challenge of the 1970s for the United States And it is and I'll come to why it's different but the Chinese understand this as well So they understand how central the control over oil is to US power And for the last two plus decades that is why China has put in such a push to renewable energy Now there's two reasons China genuinely believes in climate science and that they're impacted by the climate crisis But also they understand that what gives the United States its power is not the innovative nature of its economy or its productivity And it's its ability to control oil Now this might seem like it's just Trump but we have to understand this was the policy of Biden and Obama as well Obama was the one who first doubled down on US oil He's the one who renewed the US oil sector So I think China understands that as the basis of US power through which they will hold China in a dependent position To which even if China comes to own and produce more and more productively That they will always be bound to drain value to Wall Street because of this relationship between the oil and dollar Because when they purchase oil they'll have to go through US banks and use US dollars So this is why China has invested so much I think on one level on renewables And they have refused to submit to US financial dictates That example I gave of Japan in 1987 Similar attempt was made on China after the financial crisis in 2008 and China refused And you constantly hear this they complain about China's currency How China sets its currency But China refuses to abandon its currency sovereignty and they did again after the financial crisis Which is when Obama starts talking about a shit
to Asia. We need to pivot to Asia. So again, this is not about an individual. This is a structural crisis that generates, I think, different individual personalities. Trump might say one thing, but why is he operating another way? Why is he back to the same script? We need to understand the systemic nature of this. But China's even a bigger challenge than what Germany and Japan represented in the 1970s. Not simply that. China's rise has renewed the Bandung project of the 1950s. Okay, so we had to remember in 1955, Afro-Asian states came together and said, okay, we're getting formal political sovereignty. But we need economic sovereignty. So in some ways, I would like people to think about maybe the Bandung moment is a contrast to Westphalia. So some people will say very often, well, China is simply seeking to make the Westphalian order, the European order of sovereign states actually real and consistent. But what was different about Bandung is Westphalia doesn't talk about economic sovereignty in the way that Bandung does. Westphalia is actually built on the denial of economic sovereignty to the colonies. So Bandung is a very different project that's proposed in the 1950s by Afro-Asian states who are saying, we're free and independent, but we can't control our resources because we're dependent on the colonial countries for investment, for markets. So they set the terms of trade with us through which they drain value. China's ability from the 1980s onwards to rapidly develop and to generate surplus value again and they don't develop due colonialism. They don't develop, they develop through a mix of socialist market policies. Okay, now there's a lot that could be said there, but I would direct people to maybe Samir Amin's work on this and Giovanni Arigis' work in Adam Smith and Beijing. It goes into much more detail in terms of how China was able to so rapidly develop. But the point for us to keep in mind is by the 21st century China now possesses a major, major portion of world trade surplus, of world financial surplus, economic surplus, and this is the difference between China and Germany and Japan. China starts to recycle those surpluses into the global self. So it renews the bandung. You see, so it renews the spirit of bandung, but now you actually have a material basis for bandung. And this offers the countries of the South more policy autonomy. Now, why does this matter? We have to remember from the late 1970s or early 1980s up until the 2000s, this was the era of neoliberalism, of structural adjustment, where global South states were forced to take loans from the IMFM World Bank. Right, for the reasons I just said, they might have formal sovereignty, but they remain in conditions of economic dependency, which lead them to high indebtedness, to get out of debt, to pay their teachers, to pay their nurses, they need to take out loans, but to get those loans, the IMFM World Bank imposes conditions on them. And then they have to pay back interest payments. So there's a wealth drain out of the African continent, out of South America, out of many Asian countries. There's a wealth drain in the form of interest payments for 20, 25 years. They force these countries to reduce the support they give to their small farmers, to reduce the supports they give to public education. In the 2000s, which China is now emerging as an alternative source of finance and a recycling of wealth back, it enables countries like Malawi, and Zambia, and Philippines, which do this in the opening years of the 21st century, to say Northern IMF, to say Northern World Bank, which is going to disrupt the Wall Street financial imperialist power, to which they were draining wealth from the global south. So it's already opening up more policy space. The ability for, and they actually reintroduce farmers subsidy programs in 2005, like Malawi, they'll reintroduce these supports. Zambia, they'll reintroduce these because they're getting an alternative structural framework with which to locate their development programs. So this is a major, major problem, right? And it's going to only accelerate afterwards. Now, so on the one hand, they have this problem. How do you contain China? Like how do you contain this massive world historic force that is changing the rules of the game? And at the same time, you have, as we talked about Iran, and then Venezuela has a Bolivarian revolution that rejects US imperialism, the Acuba, and these states start trading with one another. They start supporting other sovereign projects, creating increasing space to reduce that dependency, right? To establish sovereignty over the movement of goods and capital between their territories, so they can reproduce the form of life that is significant. So they can sustain their territories in a meaningful way. That is what is at stake today, right? Either servitude and serving the interests of a totally unregulated unrestrained Epstein sort of class or returning to people across the world, the right to reproduce historically, culturally, theologically significant forms of life in their territories, just forms of life, right? So this is, I think, one thing that the United States is trying to disrupt. There's a major challenge to the financial wealth drain, and they start to attack in the 2010s, Iran and Venezuela. They impose maximum pressure sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, and China and Russia step in there to support these countries. They support Venezuela's oil nationalization campaign, and for many people who often will feel disappointment at the inability of say China to stand up to the United States, I think that has to be put next to the fact that China lost billions of dollars in Venezuela in the 2010s. And Russia did as well helping to stand up the nationalization program in the face of maximum pressure sanctions, right? In the face of the United States collapsing oil prices in 2014, 2013, right? You know, leaning on its oil producing partners. So there's a way in which I think the concern, their calculus with attacking Venezuela and Iran, Cuba is to reassert control over those oil flows, especially to impose dependency on China, right? Or to make China dependent on them, I should say, right? We hear them explicitly saying this like Venezuela, we don't want you sending oil to China. You heard Trump saying that the lead up to the attack on Iran, we're going to stop Iran from sending oil to China. Now, in doing so, you're trying to reimpose an equation on China. You might outcompete us productively. You might be having a superior economic system, but we will always control the principle source of energy that powers your economy. Now, that is actually even still a fools game because China's rapidly shifting towards a renewable-based future, right? But this is what the United States is doubling down on, even in relation. But what I will say is, those sanctions failed. The maximum pressure sanctions campaigns they weakened Venezuela and Iran, and much more so Venezuela, I think as we're seeing, but they failed, which is where they returned to the military question. In the refusal of Venezuela or Iran or Cuba to surrender by economic strangulation, imperialism returns to its founding military basis. They did that in Venezuela, and they're trying to do it again in Iran. But what they failed to recognize, especially in the case of the Islamic Republic, is how much the Islamic Republic itself may have learned from the June war, how much itself may have learned from the past two and a half years, from the past 46, 47 years, right? So I think that's why they're being challenged to restore the basis of imperialism, particularly vis-à-vis the rise of China, but also in terms of how they themselves represented that challenge. Yeah, absolutely, and they're threatening to do the military, the pivot to the more military outright violence against Cuba as well. So it seems like the US has been able to bully or convince many states, both in Latin America and also in West Asia, to somewhat abandon the states on the sort of spear tip of fighting for regional sovereignty, right? Cuba and Venezuela and Latin America, Iran, Palestine and West Asia. Why do so many of these states sort of refuse to really go all in and take up these causes, especially when China is a growing alternative to US dominance? Like I can't hope to think about Mexico and Shimbomb and her unwillingness really to really push hard against what the United States is trying to impose in terms of putting a split between them and Cuba in terms of the oil sales, for example. So there's that question and this question of why these states are not willing to go all the way. And then also what alternative developed mechanisms does China offer and what mechanisms has the US utilized to ensure this loyalty and submission? Yeah, so okay, I would say, what I would say in response to these questions is the United States in some ways it stands alone as a global scale military power. Okay, so when you're asking like why do so many of these states refuse to take up these causes? I think there's two components, like the US is a global military power and I'll explain that in a minute and the other point is the US has engaged in a form of client state construction, right? Of establishing, like I was saying, imperialism under the United States and more generally is not necessarily direct territorial control, but you can exercise indirect control. They often do this through constructing client states and for good or bad, China does not engage in that, right? China's foreign policy principles are based on principles of peaceful coexistence, whether you want a critique it or not, you have to understand that it's really committed to this idea of non-intervention. It opposed, for example, it joined the Islamic Republic and opposing Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, but it refused military intervention as a response to this, right? So it really, really is opposed to the principle of non-intervention, but the
The United States is not. So now, how does that help us answer your question as to why don't regional states, or why are they bowing to US pressure? So the United States is imposing itself militarily. Let's say in Latin America and the Caribbean. Now, I will say before I forget, this is contradictory because it's also exhausting itself. There's a hubris, there's a godlike feature the United States feels today that it can go anywhere and smash anybody and impose itself. But it's also introducing a crisis into its own capabilities and capacities. And we're seeing that, these will be the Islamic Republic right now. We're seeing that the outcome of its attacks on Yemen last year and then shifting resources to Venezuela and now moving back. But in Latin America and the Caribbean, it imposed itself as a military power that nobody in the region could stand up to. So it alone stands as a military power on a global scale. And so it says, we are the only one that can guarantee you security. So this is like a security guarantee it provides that China cannot compete with. Now, why do those particular states, not Mexico, I'll come back to Mexico in a second. But why do say the Gulf states? Why is this so appealing to them? Well, because these states aren't rooted in a deep legitimacy. So they are basically a client states that are constructed for US imperialism, for it to be able to maintain control over oil, for it to maintain military power as we're seeing now, that if there's a challenger like Iran, those Gulf states function to protect Israel, but they have those systems in place to protect them. So they're not rooted in a deep popular legitimacy. So the security question is preeminent to them. And so the United States is the only state in the world today. Russia, I think, has tried to compete with the United States on that level, but on a planetary scale, it's the United States alone, that operates as a global scale military power. So I think it projects power that brings states in line, particularly certain constituted states that it has constructed as client states. So I think that's one component of it. Now, it is still not in the interest of those states to follow the United States, 'cause they would get more of China, like you're suggesting, right? Like China is the one state that can introduce real investment capital that can help you achieve your state's aims of economic development, whether it's Mexico or Saudi Arabia. It is China alone that can do this. But I think what the United States does, is it doesn't promise security necessarily. It doesn't say, well, okay, look, China might give you an economic benefit where it might provide you with an economic foundation, but we give you a military one. It doesn't actually even just say that, because who is the United States protecting these states against itself? So it basically starts operating like a protection racket. It's like, okay, look what we just did in Venezuela. You want that to happen to you? It's like a mafia type of move. We're gonna shake you down, otherwise we're gonna break your legs. So they're offering protection, but essentially against themselves. Like it's like, and actually, maybe people will be interested in this, but there's somebody who's also quite influential on me Giovanni Rigi, he has a book to long 20th century. And he actually argues that there's been four cycles of accumulation, three cycles of accumulation perhaps in the history of capitalist world system. And at each cycle, the declining hedgehog on our imperial power, one sign that marks it is that it shifts towards a protection racket type approach. Like because it doesn't have anything to offer in terms of positive public goods for states to follow its lead. So it starts doing this sort of mafia type of move. And I think that's one way to understand how it brings states in line that it threatens to bring violence to them. Right? And it's openly doing this. And I think so you combine that with the way it works with these comparator classes to construct client states. And I think that's one way. Now China, I think though to understand this, we can understand China does offer alternative. We see this particularly in West Asia recently, but across the world, like I was saying, China gives more policy autonomy, but China can offer a scale of investment and a time of investment that the United States can. You're not going to get US firms entering and offering 30-year projects. That's something that you require a form of state financing for. So the Chinese public banking system, the Chinese state firms, the way they're able to carry projects over a longer scale, speaks to the infrastructure needs of the global south and other countries, and the way the United States simply cannot. The way the Chinese are at the leading edge of transforming the world economy towards renewables. This is something that speaks, for example, or spoke to Saudi Arabia's so-called Vision 2030, which is in shambles right now. It's kind of collapsing in many ways, but it was China alone that could provision that investment capital. And so, you know, and this is something, if you want to answer your question, that alternative development mechanism that China offers, so, you know, Saudi Arabia was in a war with Yemen, or not a war. It was attacking Yemen for eight years, okay, because the Yemen project of Ansar al-A'a is the same as the Islamic Republic in many ways. It's about the national question of reasserting sovereignty, but it understands that this is inextricable from the regional question. You can't separate the two. So this is a threat to Saudi Arabia, because Saudi Arabia is another key pillar of US imperialism. So the United States and the UK back the Saudis in attacking Yemen, and for eight years, they're attacking Yemen, trying to defeat this challenge to the regional imperialist order, right? But they're unable to do so, and all the United States can offer the Saudis more weapons, and, you know, we know that doesn't work. Like Ansar al-A'a only gets up and fires deeper, and starts, you know, like imposing war costs, and this is where China offers an alternative, right? What China says is, well, what if we have, and China's position is the integration of Iran into the region. So to integrate Iran into the region, and to have a development piece. So China speaks about a development piece or a global development initiative. It doesn't think that security and sovereignty of states will be secured to the US war on terror or military approach. It will happen through regional economic integration, okay? And through something like the Belt and Road initiative, creating synergies that distribute value evenly along the way. And that's something they offer to Saudi, to say, if we have an integration with Iran, that can bring the war in Yemen to the close. You'll never have a military solution. And we are the one state that can offer you the type of investment capital you are looking for to build whatever city you're trying to build. How are you trying to transition your economy? It is also a loan that can do this, okay? So what happens in the summer of 2023, is this Saudis potentially start, are gonna start selling their oil in the Chinese currency, right? So you have a massive, massive transformation happening. And I think it is not possible to understand the United States doubling, tripling down under Biden and Trump. So like you were saying, it's not about an individual personality, doubling, tripling down on violence, on coming into the region and committing a genocide of this nature against Gaza, escalating the violence and Lebanon, even expanding the violence to Qatar getting hit. I think that's a good example of potential protection archetype approach. And then I think introducing to Saudi Arabia and these other states, again, trying to bring them back into a military architecture, right? So I think China offered an alternative development mechanism, but I think we saw last year, Trump go to Saudi Arabia may have 2025 and offer the Saudis an enormous amount of military equipment, military munitions, large-scale weapons, like just like really hyped it up even more. And you saw Saudi going back into the US orbit in that way, but I think that's at stake. If I was to say, if you're saying, like, what is the difference here, right? So China's coming in with this global development initiative, it also has a global civilization initiative, again, that speaks to this idea of coexistence rather than domination, which is where Western imperialism kind of begins and ends, right? So I think that's how I would understand why regional countries are converging apparently around the US, right? I think the US is threatening in a way, even their friends and allies. And then China, for better or worse, does not engage in client-state construction, right? And that seems to be a disadvantage, but I guess we would have to see. So I'd like to end with coming back directly to Iran and sort of the current war on Iran. So maybe if you could just talk a little bit, maybe focusing a little bit more on the military side of things right now. Like, what is the US's short and medium-term strategy here? There's a lot of different chaotic stuff coming out of the Trump administration, right? And so I don't know how much of that we can take without a grain of salt or many grains of salt. But what do you think their strategy is here? What are the cracks in their strategy? And what is Iran's strategy in resistance? And maybe if you could also talk a little bit about, I know you mentioned before we hit record that you've been talking to some comrades in Iran about what the experience is on the ground right now in terms of overall resistance. 'Cause all we hear about in the West is people celebrating that they're being bombed. So maybe if you could talk a little bit about that. - Yeah, so I will say that I don't think the United States anticipated this sort of response from the Islamic Republic. Now, I think, and I wrote a pretty long thread on Twitter/X about this. I think it's vocal politics, this new sort of, I think they turned it into some sort of like slide show or something that people can find. But so I'm a lot of what I'm gonna say now is gonna draw from that. But like the short-meager term strategy of the United States, I think the first thing that I would put on the table here is that I actually genuinely think that the United States and the Israeli state, they were in a moment of panic. And I think we're starting to see that more clearly now. You know, it seems like it's propaganda when they kept saying,
we need his bullet to disarm, Hamas to disarm, and it seems like they're just saying these things to deflect or whatever, right? But in fact, if we look at it from a different position that perhaps they recognize that they're incapable of disarming the resistance in the region. They did this horrific genocide in front of us for two and a half years. The Palestinians have refused to surrender. They're refused to lay down their arms and the same thing in Lebanon, as well as continues to hold his arms. And this is the reason that they attacked Iran in June. This is the reason, you know, I didn't mention this before when I said what the threat it poses, or I did, let me return to this, right? The threat that Iran poses that it won't abandon Palestine is simply refuses to abandon Palestine. And they understand Iran to be the source of strategic depth and support for resistance across the region. So think, okay, if we can't get them to disarm in Lebanon and Palestine, if we can take away the only state in the world, the single state in the world that offers material support, not to Palestine in the abstract, but to Palestinian resistance, which is the basis of real Palestinians sovereignty, again, to stop begging for sovereign recognition, right? To stop asking and begging and depending on the United States, but seizing that into your own hands. This is what the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, what the resistance in Lebanon represents. So they understand that Iran is helping backstop this. That's why they target Iran with the sanctions that don't work and then in June. And this is why you have to understand that for decades, they keep saying Iran is a day away from nuclear. Iran is a day away, right? And what the last signifies is the fear that they have, right, of a sovereign power that will not subordinate themselves, coming to possess destructive capabilities equal to theirs, which means they will not be able to continue their genocidal colonial project in the region. So they target Iran and June. And what people forget is, in the last days of that war, Iran was coming on very strong. It was hit very strong at first, but it absorbed the blow and then they were coming on strong and it was Israel and the US that asked for the ceasefire. Right, there was them. And since then, I think the reality is Western media keeps parroting this thing. Iran is teetering. Iran is almost going to collapse. So what do we see during that war? Iran come on strong and we saw national unity. We saw so much cohesion, even people within Iran who may have disagreements over this or that policy, disagreements over this or that nature of the republic of the state. We saw this major, major unification. And so what has happened since that war in June is you've had Iran replenishing its arsenal at a rate that appears to be faster and more sustained than how the United States and Israel are replenishing, suppose, what, you know, has been all, has been spoken about quite widely. They're interceptor missiles, for example, right, but also they experienced a offensive missile shortage due to their attacks on Yemen last year. As I'm saying, the US is a global military power, but there are contradictions. The US might achieve tactical gains, but it's not thinking on a long term strategic horizon. Because again, it is flailing about in somewhat of a desperate state because the world is tilting in a different direction. So I think like after the war there's a replenishment of the arsenal of Iran in relation to this. And then there's something else that I mentioned in that thread I wrote is there is a strategic question here that I think the Israelis are aware of. I don't know if Trump is aware of it because I think Trump is an expression of that Epstein disease that comes out of capitalist imperialism, right. But there isn't awareness that time is almost up. I think on we might call the legitimacy of the US is really, the US is really expressionless, say, of capitalist imperialism today. We know that the Western elites are again in a disgusting way continuing to line up with these monsters. We see that even after those girls were slaughtered, those girls and boys, those young students were slaughtered in that school. I'm sorry, this is really like shocking and it shouldn't be. You know that they slaughtered hundreds of children, they named them and people like Mark Karni who are frauds and Albanese and Australia and Kyrsten Amr who pretend like they care about internet. The response to the massacre of children was Iran can never have nuclear weapons. That is their response. So now Western elites are part of this and it's not a conspiracy. They are part of it can represent many things, this sort of Epstein type of class. They are all enmeshed in this profit seeking sort of grotesquely consuming class and they want the world to be maintained in this way. So that's why even in the face of this slaughter they say they're standing with them. But I think public in their country are not holding that same line anymore. It's very clear that in the United States for example how long can you depend upon this formula? When you see the polling coming out especially amongst younger populations and when you see what's happening in the Democratic Party which has been a servant to Zionism for its whole history since the state of Israel was created. You have in the Democratic Party increasingly this entering into their primaries, this entering into the election right that you know getting funded by APEC is now harming candidates more right. You see the governor of California he's not a principled person Gavin Newsom yet he has but the fact that he's saying now Israel is in a part tied state. The fact that he's saying to revisit it is not what he believes is what he thinks he needs to say. And well one can say he'll abandon that but nobody's even ever said that before like who's run in a Gavin Newsom way on that sort of platform. So I think that's a sign I think increasingly probably you know if in the midterms if Trump loses badly are you going to be able to conduct this war in six months or eight months when we're in midterm season. So you have these two converging forces a rising strength of Iran a crisis in the military industrial complex for Israel and US and a legitimation crisis that's only deepening so this was the window with which they could strike and I think they believe then there's a sense of panic that is there. But it combines with a hubris that's a funny combination how can you have hubris and panic at the same time but because they took out Venezuela and that was easy we just went and we hit Maduro really hard and then you know the regime. So called what they call the regime we're able to pivot and shift it and we're able to establish control over oil flows which is what we really want it right we don't mind actually maybe Venezuela can develop where we don't need to keep them in a certain way but we just can't have them. In independent relationship with China or Cuba and they're able to achieve this similar with Islamic Republic I think their aim is to put in place a leadership it doesn't have to be a quote unquote regime change that they're asking for to have a strong strike you take out committee and the consequence will be something similar to Venezuela. Now Iran's resistance that part of the question you ask is really pivotal here it is what is crack their strategy okay so what did Iran learn from the 12 day war in June what did Iran learn from say it's partners in the axis okay learn very powerful lessons that those who have hubris do not understand that those they seek to attack can also learn lessons okay so what are some of the lessons they learn so Iran now made sure to emphasize. And sure to emphasize continuity in the face of military attacks it's a form of deterrence in and of itself so you take out the head of state a revered figure a revered leader who is the ultimate commander if you take out that figure but the republic is still able to demonstrate continuity which they did immediately there was simply no crisis that came to the Islamic Republic with a martyrdom of a side committee right so you don't have any. Let's say strategic advance that happens there the western media keep saying this but they keep saying about demonstrating it they keep assuming there's a crisis but everything we can see is Iran stood up and maintained a coherent posture and it struck back even stronger blows from before so I think strategically they're showing the limits of military power you can damage so Iran is less concerned with necessarily I mean at the strategic level they are so you know they're saying this is unforgivable. We're not going to stop until we get accountability but they're not so concerned if Israel is going to say oh we we did this massive bombing today and look what we hit you know they're not going to say okay that's going to require a tactical response but they want to show whatever you're hitting is not achieving strategic objectives and they've shown that very clearly now on the military field itself. Iran is also advanced it's destructive capabilities right so I think they are introducing a different type of deterrence now okay so one is to demonstrate strategic continuity but another is that they're demonstrating that we can impose mutually assured destruction upon this whole system so we're not just fighting a one to one colonizer this whole imperial system which includes not necessarily what Iran calls our brothers in the Gulf states but they're not going to be a part of the state. But the bases in those states the military bases right so they have demonstrated that if you think you can destroy our state well we will simultaneously demonstrate that we can destroy yours as well this is like the mutually assured destruction deterrence doctrine right and I think they have accelerated and introduced the development of both weapons in the formal hypersonic with missiles and anti ship missiles through their relations both endogenously because Iran has a really strong industrial military power. Industrial military production sector but also through their relations with Russia and China and I think we're going to have a little bit of a discussion.
That's one thing we have to remember, I didn't get to it before, but the 25-year agreement between China and Iran signed in 2021 has a military cooperation component to it. So when you see, and this has been commented on quite wildly, but the level of targeting that Iran has demonstrated, you know, like the precision of targeting in different places, taking out the radar systems and the way they have, this is, I think, both an expression of the strength of the Iranian domestic military production, but also these relations that are holes. So I think, like, that was a stuck in components. So one, they demonstrate strategic continuity. A second one, they accelerate the development and introduction of weapons and surveillance and targeting that demonstrates mutually assured destruction. And they very clearly have done this. They have shifted to Chinese navigation systems, again, which makes maybe communication more independent from the US and the Zionist forces. So I think, you know, on the military question, they're demonstrating this in real time. And you see how they systematically took out the THAAD radar system across the region, which is now opening up more space for their missiles, right? And alongside that, you know, what we didn't get to, but this question on the access of resistance, we're seeing a new access now. We're seeing a renewed access of resistance. We're seeing, on Sir Allah has not even entered into this conflict at that, but just the seeming coordination between his bullet and the Islamic Republic, and it's not really coordinated in a centralized sense. Because another lesson that the Islamic Republic has learned from those that it moves in access formation with is the value of a decentralized mode of command and control, right? So you have this kind of movement between centralization and decentralization. So that's happening, but even still there's some sort of harmony that's been achieved between his bullet and the Islamic Republic over the past several days, right? So you're having a return of his bullet, clearly understanding, you know, they might have seemed weak over the past year, like they had been weakened. And you know, to some degrees they had been significantly weakened. But in other ways, they were absorbing Israeli blows, perhaps, and waiting for this sort of opportunity with which to strike, right? And now it's very clear you're seeing Israel, the United States and Israel having a lot of difficulty on these two fronts. So they're really encountering difficulties with his bullet because of how many resources are diverted to fighting Iran, right? So I think that is kind of the United States, I think, was expecting something else when they struck Iran. I don't know if necessarily I think they were thinking, okay, maybe you will have to go on, but I think they were hoping for an expecting something. But now I think what they're seeking to maintain, and you hear the Israelis saying this, they're seeking to maintain chaos. This is something that Giovanni Rigi talks about in the long 20th century, is that in moments of transition, it can lead to a new hedgemon, it can lead to a new system, either it can lead to a new imperialist power, it can lead to something else. And in his final book, he talks about China potentially creating a different type of world system. They're not on its own, but again, in concert with the global South as it's rising, right? But Rigi also says that could be counteracted by systematic chaos. And his concern is that the United States possesses such destructive military power that it would prefer to burn up the whole planet than to make space for actual rational coexistence, which is where we started our conversation, right? Western imperialism is built on denying those really rational conversations to actually negotiating in good faith. It's built upon a genocidal violence which you force others to sign deals on your terms, right? Not on mutually beneficial win-win terms. That's what's at stake in the world today, right? So even whether it's the Chinese project or the Islamic Republic is, it's how do you generate a world of difference of mutual beneficial relations or this world of domination, right? And you can see that this is something that they did not get immediately, but maybe they are going to prefer endless chaos now. And if it's not necessarily everybody in the United States, the US is really winged. It's not that Israel is controlling the United States. It's not that Israel is simply an attack dog of the United States. There's this merger between the settler edge of imperialism and the imperialist bodies of whole, right? And you're seeing that people like Pete Heigset, I don't know what Trump really believes or doesn't, but that sort of wing is very clearly all in on endless chaos. They don't seem to have a problem with that. So I think that's the dangerous territory that we've emerged into. But I think on the other hand, it may be dangerous, but it seems as though the initiative in many ways is with the Islamic Republic. It is with the axis more generally. So I think this is what I would understand and what I would end with though is what I would end with is the speech that the foreign minister of Iran Abbas Al-Aqjee gave at the Al-Jazir of Forum, I think in Doha shortly before the United States attacked. He returns us to the question of Palestine. So he talks about world order and the transformation of world order and he said nothing is possible. Why would he say this? If Iran abandons Palestine, like I mentioned in that article, he asks Iran can have everything for Americans. So why does he return to Palestine? It has to do like we were talking about with both the material, technical and ethical and theological foundations of the Islamic Republic. Otherwise how can anybody explain this? So he returns to Palestine and he says there is no future for any world order, multipolar or otherwise without a reconstructed Palestine, without a rebuilt Palestine, right? To which justice and accountability has been given. So the world needs to center on Gaza for what has happened and he's bringing us back there. So that is I think a key part of their strategy. Now they're saying they want to cease fire funds. We will not give it until this war comes to a total end. That's what was said by Iraqi today. So what is he implying by this world coming to a total end? I think that has serious implications for Gaza. It has serious implications for Lebanon. So I think they're not wanting to return to a status quo because they see what that can do. And maybe, okay, so I lied, what I really will end on then, we should always end on Palestine but what I didn't get to is what you mentioned, what we're hearing from comrades and people we know on the ground in Iran and we're seeing images coming up that we are seeing another part of Iran's strategy in resisting, right? Is this question of national and social cohesion? We have to remember the strategy of imperialism is always that it unifies itself on the basis of breaking and dividing those that attacks, right? So it wants, you know, a lot of like Western leftists, particularly like anarchists, they'll fall into this trap of celebrating vulcanization. They want to break and smash states because the states they live in are never subject to being broken and smashed, right? Like they unify. Europe was divided in January over Greenland but then they unify over Iran, right? This is the pattern of imperialism. Western unity is always found in the scramble for Africa, the opium wars. This this week you see this disgusting display of Western unity in the service of genocidal forces. So on the one hand, they're doing that and they're trying to divide Iranian society. Deep in the divisions, like all society are going to have fault lines and divisions, but they're trying to play them up in a particular way. But we're seeing the opposite actually happening on the ground. And I think the martyrdom of the leader, Said Kamini, had a profound impact on this in many ways because it was demonstrated to people who might be feeling frustrated with the economic conditions of Iran. Now, those are generated in the first and last instance by sanctions, even the corruption in Iran and even the wealth inequality which have a domestic class component that we can't overlook. So primary question that structures those is economic sanctions in endless war against Iran. So whatever discontent there is, the meaning, you know, the commitment that their leader demonstrates to their country, to defending their country by not fleeing or not hiding, by accepting martyrdom has also provided a unifying impact. And we're seeing people up all night on the streets across Iran defending their country, doing what they can to keep mobilized in a spirit of defense of their public. And those who are doing so continue to believe that there is an inextricable relationship between the liberation of the Islamic Republic from imperialism and the liberation of Palestine. They do not chant those slogans that you hear in the diaspora, "No to Gaza, no to Lebanon, my heart is only for Iran." Right? That's what when you see people holding up these signs of Trump and Netanyahu, the people on the streets in Iran defending their country against the most brutal forces in the world today. They continue to stand on the side of the oppressed, on the side of those who've been on the front lines bearing the highest cost fighting imperialism in Palestine and Lebanon and now they have joined them in Iran. You've been listening to an upstream conversation with Bechrom Gell, a faculty in political science and international relations and a scholar of international political economy. He's the author of "The Political Ecology of Colonial Capitalism," "Race, Nature, and Accumulation" published by Manchester University Press. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you to Karcie Blanton for the Intermission Music, "Uptstream Thee Music" was composed by Robert. "Uptstream is entirely listener-funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants, just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support." Subscribe to our Patreon for biweekly bonus episodes, access to our entire Bat Catalog of Patreon episodes.
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Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The Islamic Revolution in Iran is framed as a dual material and ethical challenge to U.S. imperialism, contesting its military and economic foundations.
Imperialism is defined as a global structure that systematically denies or diminishes the sovereignty of states to serve imperial interests, distinct from but related to colonialism.
Sovereignty has both quantitative (military force, territorial control) and qualitative (form of life, social organization) dimensions, both of which are targeted by imperial forces.
Capitalist imperialism emerged concurrently with capitalism, using military and economic violence to under-reproduce labor and resources in the periphery, stabilizing capitalism's internal contradictions.
The ongoing conflict with Iran is characterized as part of a broader "second cold war," centered on the direction of development in the Global South, not merely a regional dispute.
Summary:
S. imperialism, which is analyzed as a global structure that systematically undermines state sovereignty through military and economic means. The guest scholar defines imperialism as a system that organizes international relations to benefit imperial powers by diminishing the sovereignty of others, distinguishing it from direct colonial rule.
Sovereignty is explained as having two layers: quantitative control over territory and the qualitative form of social and economic life within it. The conversation argues that capitalist imperialism is foundational to capitalism itself, emerging simultaneously to resolve capitalism's internal contradictions by forcibly extracting resources and underpaying labor in the periphery. The current tensions with Iran are thus positioned not as an isolated conflict but as a key front in a larger struggle over development models and sovereignty in the Global South during a renewed era of geopolitical confrontation.
FAQs
Imperialism is a structure that systematically organizes relations between states to deny or diminish the sovereignty of many states in favor of imperial powers, using military and economic means.
Imperialism and capitalism emerged together, with imperialism stabilizing capitalism's contradictions by under-reproducing labor and resources in colonies to lower costs in core capitalist countries.
Colonialism involves direct territorial conquest and rule, while imperialism is a broader system that can deny sovereignty without territorial conquest, such as through economic sanctions.
The two bases are military power, which uses force to usurp sovereignty, and economic power, which controls economic flows to constrain a state's policy choices and sovereignty.
Sovereignty involves who holds decision-making power over a territory, with both quantitative (military force) and qualitative (form of life, legitimacy) dimensions that determine recognition and defense.
The Iranian Revolution challenges the military and economic bases of U.S. imperialism by seeking to restore sovereignty for dignified development, resisting economic strangulation and military violence.
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