This paper offers an alternative approach to the repeated occurrence of Middle East 'energy conflicts'. Our analysis centres around the process of differential capital accumulation, emphasizing the quest to exceed the 'normal rate of return' and to expands one's share in the overall flow of profit.

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The recent shift from ‘global villageism’ to the ‘new wars’ revealed a deep crisis in heterodox political economy. The popular belief in neoliberal globalization, peace dividends, fiscal conservatism and sound finance that dominated the 1980s and 1990s suddenly collapsed. The early 2000s brought rising xenophobia, growing military budgets and policy profligacy. Radicals were the first to identify this transition, but their attempts to explain it have been bogged down by two major hurdles: (1) most writers continue to apply nineteenth century theories and concepts to twenty-first century realities; and (2) few seem to bother with empirical analysis. This paper offers a radical alternative that is both theoretically new and empirically grounded. We use the ‘new wars’ as a stepping stone to understand a triple transformation that altered the nature of capital, the accumulation of capital and the unit of capital. Specifically, our argument builds on a power understanding of capital that emphasizes differential accumulation by dominant capital groups. Accumulation, we argue, has little to do with the amassment of material things measured in ‘utils’ or ‘abstract labor.’ Instead, accumu-lation, or ‘capitalization,’ represents a commodification of power by leading groups in society. Over the past century, this power has been restructured and concentrated through two distinct regimes of differential accumulation—‘breadth’ and ‘depth.’ A breadth regime relies on proletarianization, on green-field investment and, particularly, on mergers and acquisitions. A depth regime builds on redistribution through stagflation—that is, on differential inflation in the midst of stagnation. In contrast to breadth which presupposes some measure of growth and stability, depth thrives on ‘accumulation through crisis.’ The past twenty years were dominated by breadth, buttressed by neoliberal rhetoric, globalization and capital mobility. This regime started to run into mounting difficulties in the late 1990s, and eventually collapsed in 2000. For differential accumulation to continue, dominant capital now needs inflation, and inflation requires instability and social crisis. It is within this broader dynamics of power accumulation that the new wars need to be understood.

A BS T R A C TThe paper offers a new approach for analysing capitalist development and crisis, tying together mergers and acquisitions, stag ation and globalization as integral facets of accumulation. The framework builds on the concept of differential accumulation, emphasizing the power drive by dominant capital groups to beat the average and exceed the normal rate of return. Four regimes of differential accumulation are articulated: internal breadth by amalgamation, external breadth through green-eld investment, internal depth via cost-cutting, and external depth through stag ation. The complex relationships between these different regimes, as well as their broader societal implications, are analysed in light of the US experience over the past century. Several broad conclusions emerge. (1) Of the four regimes, the most important are amalgamation and stag ation, which tend to oscillate inversely to each other. (2) Over the longer haul, amalgamation grows exponentially relative to green-eld investment, contributing to the stagnation tendency of modern capitalism. (3) The wave-like pattern of mergers and acquisitions re ects the progressive break-up of socioeconomic 'envelopes', as dominant capital moves through successive amalgamation at the industry, sectoral, national, and, nally, global level. In this sense, the current global merger wave is an integral facet of differential accumulation. (4) Periodic lulls in amalgamation tend to be compensated for by stag ation, which appears as a crisis at the societal level, but which contributes signi cantly to differential accumulation at the disaggregate level. An end to the present worldwide merger boom could therefore trigger global stag ation. (5) Stag ation crises have been previously 'resolved' when dominant capital broke its existing envelope, pushing to amalgamate within a broader universe of takeover targets. Given that there is nothing more to conquer beyond the global envelope, future stag ation crises may prove much more dif cult to tame. K E Y WO R D S

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