The new imperialism is a product of the ‘neo-liberal’ period of capital accumulation beginning in the late 1970s fused with the reordering of the state system that began with the end of the Cold War in 1989. This fusion has produced a particular form of popular resistance which combines protest at the effects of globalisation with a movement against war. This is the modern form taken by the struggle between nation-states, corporate competition and the resistance of working class and poor – our three titans discussed first in the introduction. The precursors of such struggles can be seen in earlier incar-

nations: from the inter-imperialist rivalry of the hey-day of the European empires, through the First World War and the revolutions in Russia and Germany which ultimately brought that conflict to a close, to the great wave of anti-colonial struggles during the Cold War. But just as it is important to see the continuities between each of these forms of imperialism, it is also important to see what differentiates them. It is in this debate that the real nature of the new imperialism can be further delineated. On the political right the new era has given rise to a series of

justifications for imperialism rarely heard since the days of European colonialism. The defining ideological counter-position of the Cold War was ‘democracy’ versus ‘communism’. With the demise of ‘communism’ the argument from the right has reverted to an older polarity – ‘democracy’ versus ‘barbarism’.

The civilising mission of the major powers is to bring democracy where the indigenous people are too benighted or religiously blind to achieve it for themselves. In this chapter these arguments are examined. On the political left there have also been some who have

argued that the new form of empire is so different from what went before that both the old methods of analysis and resistance are of little use. These approaches commonly underestimate the contradictions inherent in the relationship between competing units of capital and nation-states, thus attributing greater strengths to the system than it actually possesses. Or they tend to underestimate the potential power of those who oppose the modern imperial system. In what follows, and in the next chapter, I examine some of

the most commonly heard arguments from both the right and the left about the nature of the new imperial system and the resistance to it.