An Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk Management
An Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk Management
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冷漠的帝国：美国战争与风险管理的金融逻辑
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发表时间：
2007
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Randy Martin
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作者：
Randy Martin
在这篇对当代美帝国主义的重要马克思主义批判中，文化理论家兰迪·马丁认为，基于金融的风险控制逻辑已经主导了美国人的日常生活以及美国的外交和国内政策。风险管理——调整风险并利用风险获取经济收益的能力——是个人理财的关键，也是庞大的全球金融衍生品市场的决定性因素。美国通过利用特定的干预措施（例如伊拉克）来实现更大的目标（赢得反恐战争），并通过部署少量部队和有针对性的武器来实现广泛的效果，从而发动无形的反恐战争。无论是在全球金融市场还是在遥远的战场上，乘数效应都难以预见或控制。
马丁借鉴了米歇尔·福柯、乔治·阿甘本、迈克尔·哈特、安东尼奥·内格里和阿基尔·姆贝贝等理论家的经验，阐释了一种令人恐惧的金融逻辑，必须理解这种逻辑才能予以反击。马丁认为，金融将世界分为两类：一类是能够通过承担风险来利用财富机会的人（投资者），另一类是不能这样做的人，他们被视为“处于风险之中”。他认为，现代美帝国主义不同于以前的帝国主义模式，在过去的帝国主义模式中，占领者与被占领者进行接触，以“文明”他们，吸走财富，或两者兼而有之。相比之下，美帝国主义是一个冷漠的帝国：大规模逃避接触。美国敦促被占领者接受风险和自我管理，然后忽视或剥夺那些无法达到要求的人。
In this significant Marxist critique of contemporary American imperialism, the cultural theorist Randy Martin argues that a finance-based logic of risk control has come to dominate Americans’ everyday lives as well as U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Risk management—the ability to adjust for risk and to leverage it for financial gain—is the key to personal finance as well as the defining element of the massive global market in financial derivatives. The United States wages its amorphous war on terror by leveraging particular interventions (such as Iraq) to much larger ends (winning the war on terror) and by deploying small numbers of troops and targeted weaponry to achieve broad effects. Both in global financial markets and on far-flung battlegrounds, the multiplier effects are difficult to foresee or control.
Drawing on theorists including Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Achille Mbembe, Martin illuminates a frightening financial logic that must be understood in order to be countered. Martin maintains that finance divides the world between those able to avail themselves of wealth opportunities through risk taking (investors) and those who cannot do so, who are considered “at risk.” He contends that modern-day American imperialism differs from previous models of imperialism, in which the occupiers engaged with the occupied to “civilize” them, siphon off wealth, or both. American imperialism, by contrast, is an empire of indifference: a massive flight from engagement. The United States urges an embrace of risk and self-management on the occupied and then ignores or dispossesses those who cannot make the grade.