ABSTRACT
It is a commonplace that the United States now exercises something close to a global monopoly over the international use of force and, moreover, that this state of affairs is likely to persist for some considerable time. It is much less clear, however, just what this fact signifies for the conduct of contemporary international politics and even for the future of US grand strategy towards the international capitalist order. For many the Bush administration’s ‘war on terrorism’ is a composite, even if contradictory, attempt to assert permanent US dominance over other states and the system of states as a means of expanding, and policing, a liberal imperialist international capitalist order. ‘The primary principle of [US] foreign policy, rooted in Wilsonian idealism and carried over from Clinton to Bush II,’ says Noam Chomsky, ‘is “the imperative of America’s mission as the vanguard of history, transforming the global order and, in doing so, perpetuating its own dominance” guided by “the imperative of military supremacy, maintained in perpetuity and projected globally”.’1
