Paul, I hadn't seen the Guardian's comment on Blair, so thanks for drawing attention to this. The argument for this which you report seems sensible to me. But I'm unconvinced by the idea that we are at the dawn of an age of "peaceful" super-imperialism, even in the narrow sense of no wars between imperialist powers. While I agree that it's a long step from such initial re-establishments of protectorates to the possibility of inter-imperialist rivalries re-emerging. I don't think it's long enough to rule it out -- clearly it wasn't so 100 years ago. On the other hand, I'm fairly ignorant of this literature -- has anyone argued that there is something inherent in the inter-relation of capitalism as such with the state apparatuses which support that *rules out* (or at any rate rules out given some specified set of conditions) the kind of conflict you have in mind? The argument that it is impossible per so would seem unsustainable given the history of the 20th century, so putting this through does seem to depend on (a) identifying some contingent feature of the modern world economy that inhibits conflict AND (b) defeating the claims of those who claim that inter-imperialist conflict is inevitable on theoretical grounds. Julian
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