Introduction
To the growing army of critics of US
military intervention, who also reject the mendacious claims by American
officials and their apologists of ‘world leadership’, Washington is engaged in
‘empire-building”.
But the notion that the US is building
an empire, by engaging in wars to exploit and plunder countries’ markets,
resources and labor, defies the realities of the past two decades. US wars,
including invasions, bombings, occupations, sanctions, coups and clandestine
operations have not resulted in the expansion of markets, greater control and
exploitation of resources or the ability to exploit cheap labor. Instead US
wars have destroyed enterprises, reduced access to raw materials, killed,
wounded or displaced productive workers around the world, and limited access to
lucrative investment sites and markets via sanctions.
In other words, US global military
interventions and wars have done the exact opposite of what all previous empires
have pursued: Washington has exploited (and depleted) the domestic economy to
expand militarily abroad instead of enriching it.
Why and how the US global wars differ
from those of previous empires requires us to examine (1) the forces driving
overseas expansion; (2) the political conceptions accompanying the conquest,
the displacement of incumbent rulers and the seizure of power and; (3) the
reorganization of the conquered states and the accompanying economic and social
structures to sustain long-term neo-colonial relations.
Empire Building: The Past
Europe built durable, profitable and
extensive empires, which enriched the ‘mother country’, stimulated local
industry, reduced unemployment and ‘trickled down’ wealth in the form of better
wages to privileged sectors of the working class. Imperial military expeditions
were preceded by the entry of major trade enterprises (British East India
Company) and followed by large-scale manufacturing, banking and commercial
firms. Military invasions and political takeovers were driven by competition
with economic rivals in Europe, and later, by the US and Japan.
The goal of military interventions was
to monopolize control over the most lucrative economic resources and markets in
the colonized regions. Imperial repression was directed at creating a docile
low wage labor force and buttressing subordinate local collaborators or
client-rulers who facilitated the flow of profits, debt payments, taxes and
export revenues back to the empire.
Imperial wars were the beginning, not
the end, of ‘empire building’. What followed these wars of conquest was the
incorporation of pre-existing elites into subordinate positions in the
administration of the empire. The ‘sharing of revenues’, between the imperial
economic enterprises and pre-existing elites, was a crucial part of ‘empire
building’. The imperial powers sought to ‘instrumentalize’ existing religious,
political, and economic elites’ and harness them to the new imperial-centered
division of labor. Pre-existing economic activity, including local
manufacturers and agricultural producers, which competed with imperial
industrial exporters, were destroyed and replaced by malleable local traders
and importers (compradors). In summary, the military dimensions of empire
building were informed by economic interests in the mother country. The
occupation was pre-eminently concerned with preserving local collaborative
powers and, above all, restoring and expanding the intensive and extensive
exploitation of local resources and labor, as well as the capture and
saturation of local markets with goods from the imperial center.
“Empire-building” Today
The results of contemporary US military
interventions and invasions stand in stark contrast with those of past imperial
powers. The targets of military aggression are selected on the basis of
ideological and political criteria. Military action does not follow the lead of
‘pioneer’ economic entrepreneurs – like the British East India Company.
Military action is not accompanied by large-scale, long-term capitalist
enterprises. Multi-national construction companies of the empire, which build
great military bases are a drain on the imperial treasury.
Contemporary US intervention does not
seek to secure and take over the existing military and civilian state
apparatus; instead the invaders fragment the conquered state, decimate its
cadres, professionals and experts at all levels, thus providing an entry for
the most retrograde ethno-religious, regional, tribal and clan leaders to
engage in intra-ethnic, sectarian wars against each other, in other words –
chaos. Even the Nazis, in their expansion phase, chose to rule through local
collaborator elites and maintained established administrative structures at all
levels.
With US invasions, entire existing socio-economic
structures are undermined, not ‘taken over’: all productive activity is subject
to the military priorities of leaders bent on permanently crippling the
conquered state and its advanced economic, administrative, educational,
cultural and social sectors. While this is militarily successful in the
short-run, the medium and long-term results are non-functioning states, not a
sustained inflow of plunder and expanding market for an empire. Instead what we
have is a chain of US military bases surrounded by a sea of hostile, largely
unemployed populations and warring ethno-religious groups in decimated
economies.
The US claims to ‘world leadership’ is
based exclusively on failed-state empire building. Nevertheless, the dynamic
for continuing to expand into new regions, to militarily and politically
intervene and establish new client entities continues. And, most importantly,
this expansionist dynamic further undermines domestic economic interests,
which, theoretically and historically, form the basis for empire. We,
therefore, have imperialism without empire, a vampire state
preying on the vulnerable and devouring its own in the process.
Empire or Vampire: The Results
of US Global Warfare
Empires, throughout history, have
violently seized political power and exploited the riches and resources (both
material and human) of the targeted regions. Over time, they would consolidate
a ‘working relation’, insuring the ever-increasing flow of wealth into the
mother country and the expanding presence of imperial enterprises in the
colony. Contemporary US military interventions have had the opposite effect
after every recent major military conquest and occupation.
Iraq: Vampires Pillage
Under Saddam Hussein, the Republic of
Iraq was a major oil producer and profitable partner for major US oil
companies, as well as a lucrative market for US exports. It was a stable,
unified secular state. The first Gulf War in the 1990s led to the first phase
of its fragmentation with the de facto establishment of a Kurdish mini-state in
the north under US protection. The US withdrew its military forces but imposed
brutal economic sanctions limiting economic reconstruction from the devastation
of the first Gulf War. The second US-led invasion and full-scale occupation in
2003 devastated the economy and dismantled the state dismissing tens of
thousands of experienced civil servants, teachers and police. This led to utter
social collapse and fomented ethno-religious warfare leading to the killing,
wounding or displacement of millions of Iraqis. The result of GW Bush’s
conquest of Baghdad was a ‘failed state’. US oil and energy companies lost
billions of dollars in trade and investment and the US economy was pushed into
recession.
Afghanistan: Endless Wars,
Endless Losses
The US war against Afghanistan began
with the arming, financing and political support of Islamist
jihadi-fundamentalists in 1979. They succeeded in destroying and dismantling a
secular, national government. With the decision to invade Afghanistan in
October 2001 the US became an occupier in Southwest Asia. For the next thirteen
years, the US-puppet regime of Hamad Karzai and the ‘NATO coalition’ occupation
forces proved incapable of defeating the Taliban guerrilla army. Billions of
dollars were spent devastating the economy and impoverishing the vast majority
of Afghans. Only the opium trade flourished. The effort to create an army loyal
to the puppet regime failed. The forced retreat of US armed forces beginning in
2014 signals the bitter demise of US ‘empire building’ in Southwest Asia.
Libya: From Lucrative Trading
Partner to Failed State
Libya, under President Gadhafi, was
evolving into a major US and European trading partner and influential power in
Africa. The regime signed large-scale, long-term contracts with major international
oil companies that were backed by a stable secular government. The relationship
with the US and EU was profitable. The US opted to impose a ‘regime change’
through massive US-EU missile and bombing strikes and the arming of a motley
collection of Islamist terrorists, ex-pat neo-liberals and tribal militias.
While these attacks succeeded in killing President Gadhafi and most of his
family (including many of his grandchildren) and dismantling the secular Libyan
government and administrative infrastructure, the country was ripped apart by
tribal war-lord conflicts, political disintegration and the utter destruction
of the economy. Oil investors fled. Over one million Libyans and immigrant
workers were displaced. The US and EU ‘partners-in-regime-change’ have even
fled their own embassies in Tripoli – while the Libyan ‘parliament’ operates
off-shore from a casino boat. None of this devastation would have been possible
under President Gadhafi. The US vampire bled its new prize, Libya, but
certainly could not incorporate it into a profitable ‘empire’. Not only were
its oil resources denied to the empire, but even oil exports disappeared. Not
even an imperial military base has been secured in North Africa!
Syria: Wars on Behalf of
Terrorists not Empire
Washington and its EU allies backed an
armed uprising in Syria hoping to install a puppet regime and bring Damascus
into their “empire”. The mercenary assaults have caused the deaths of nearly
200,000 Syrians, the displacement of over 30% of the population and the seizure
of the Syrian oil fields by the Sunni extremist army, ISIS. ISIS has decimated
the pro-US mercenary army, recruiting and arming thousands of terrorists from
around the world It invaded neighboring Iraq conquering the northern third of that
country. This was the ultimate result of the deliberate US dismantling of the
Iraqi state in 2003.
The US strategy, once again, is to arm
Islamist extremists to overthrow the secular Bashar Assad regime in Damascus
and then to discard them for a more pliable client. The strategy ‘boomeranged’ on Washington.
ISIS devastated the ineffective Iraqi armed forces of the Maliki regime in
Baghdad and America’s much over-rated Peshmerga proxy ‘fighters’ in Iraqi
‘Kurdistan’. Washington’s mercenary war in Syria didn’t expand the ‘empire’;
indeed it undermined existing imperial outposts.
The Ukrainian Power Grab,
Russian Sanctions and Empire Building
In the aftermath of the collapse of the
USSR, the US and EU incorporated the Baltic, Eastern European and Balkan
ex-communist countries into their orbit. This clearly violated major agreements with Russia, by incorporating
most of the neo-liberal regimes into NATO and bringing NATO forces to the very
border of Russia. During the corrupt regime of Boris Yeltsin, the ‘West’
absolutely looted the Russian economy in co-operation with local gangster –
oligarchs, who took up EU or Israeli citizenship to recycle their pillaged
wealth. The demise of the vassal Yeltsin regime and the ascent and recovery of
Russia under Vladimir Putin led the US and EU to formulate a strategy to deepen
and extend its ‘empire’ by seizing power in the Caucuses and the Ukraine. A
power and land grab by the puppet regime in Georgia attacking Russian forces in
Ossetia in 2012 was decisively beaten back. This was a mere dress rehearsal for
the coup in Kiev. In late 2013-early 2014, the US financed a violent rightwing
putsch ousting the elected government and imposing a hand-picked pro-NATO
client to assume power in Kiev.
The new pro-US regime moved quickly to
purge all independent, democratic, federalist, bilingual and anti-NATO voices
especially among the bi-lingual citizens concentrated in the South-Eastern
Ukraine. The coup and the subsequent purge provoked a major armed uprising in
the southeast, which successfully resisted the invading NATO-backed neo-fascist
armed forces and private armies of the oligarchs. The failure of the Kiev
regime to subdue the resistance fighters of the Donbass region resulted in a
multi-pronged US-EU intervention designed to isolate, weaken and undermine the
resistance. First and foremost they attempted to pressure Russia to close its
borders on the eastern front where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians
eventually fled the bombardment. Secondly, the US and EU applied economic
sanctions on Russia to abandon its political support for the southeast region’s
democratic and federalist demands. Thirdly, it sought to use the Ukraine
conflict as a pretext for a major military build-up on Russia’s borders,
expanding NATO missile sites and organizing an elite rapid interventionist
military force capable of bolstering a faltering puppet regime or backing a
future NATO sponsored putsch against any adversary.
The Kiev regime is economically
bankrupt. Its war against its own civilians in the southeast has devastated
Ukraine’s economy. Hundreds of thousands of skilled professionals, workers and
their families have fled to Russia. Kiev’s embrace of the EU has resulted in
the breakdown of vital gas and oil agreements with Russia, undermining the
Ukraine’s principle source of energy and heating with winter only months away.
Kiev cannot pay its debts and faces default. The rivalries between neo-fascists
and neo-liberals in Kiev will further erode the regime. In sum, the US-EU power
grab in the Ukraine has not led to the effective ‘expansion of empire’; rather
it has ushered in the total destruction of an emerging economy and precipitated
a sharp reversal of financial, trade and investment relations with Russia and
Ukraine. The economic sanctions against Russia exacerbate the EU current
economic crisis. The belligerent posture of military confrontation toward
Russia will result in an increase in military spending among the EU states and
further divert scarce economic resources form job creation and social programs.
The loss by significant sectors of the EU of agricultural export markets, as
well as the loss of several billion-dollar military-industrial contracts with
Russia, certainly weakens, rather than expands, the ‘empire’ as an economic
force
Iran: 100 Billion Dollar
Punitive Sanctions Don’t Build Empires
The US-EU sanctions on Iran carry a
very high political, economic and political price tag. They do not strengthen
empire, if we understand ‘empire’ to mean the expansion of multi-national
corporations, and increasing access to oil and gas resources to ensure stable,
cheap energy for strategic economic sectors within the imperial center.
The economic war on Iran has been at
the behest of US allies, including the Gulf Monarchies and especially Israel.
These are dubious ‘allies’ for US ‘empire’ . . . widely reviled potentates and
a racist regime which manage to exact tribute from the imperial center!
In Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere,
Iran has demonstrated its willingness to co-operate in power sharing agreements
with US global interest. However, Iran is a regional power, which will not
submit to becoming a vassal state of the US. The sanctions policy has not
provoked an uprising among the Iranian masses nor has it led to regime change.
Sanctions have not weakened Iran to the extent of making it an easy military
target. While sanctions have weakened Iran’s economy, they has also worked
against any kind of long-range empire building strategy, because Iran has
strengthened its economic and diplomatic ties with the US’ rivals, Russia and
China.
Conclusion
As this brief survey indicates, US-EU
wars have not been instruments of empire-building in the conventional or
historical sense. At most they have destroyed some adversaries of empire. But
these have been pyrrhic victories. Along with the overthrow of a target regime,
the systematic break-up of the state has unleashed powerful chaotic forces,
which have doomed any possibility of creating stable neo-colonial regimes
capable of controlling their societies and securing opportunities for
imperialist enrichment via economic exploitation.
At most the US overseas wars have
secured military outposts, foreign islands in seas of desperate and hostile
populations. Imperial wars have provoked continuous underground resistance
movements, ethnic civil wars and violent terrorist organizations that threaten
‘blowback’ on the imperial center.
The US and EU’s easy annexations of the
ex-communist countries, usually via the stage-managed ballot-box or ‘color
revolutions’, led to the take-over of great national wealth and skilled labor.
However, Euro-American empires bloody campaigns to invade and conquer the
Middle East, South Asia, North Africa and the Caucuses have created nightmarish
‘failed states’ – continuously draining imperial coffers and leading to a state
of permanent occupation and warfare.
The bloodless takeover of the Eastern
European satellites with their accommodating, corrupt elites has ended. The 21st
century reliance on militarist strategies contrasts sharply with the successful
multi-pronged colonial expansions of the 19th–20th century, where economic
penetration and large scale economic development accompanied military
intervention and political change. Today’s imperial wars cause economic decay
and misery within the domestic economy, as well as perpetual wars abroad, an
unsustainable drain.
The current US/EU military expansion
into Ukraine, the encirclement of Russia, NATO missiles aimed at the very heart
of a major nuclear power and the economic sanctions may lead to a global
nuclear war, which may indeed put an end to militarist empire-building… and the
rest of humanity.
© Copyright 2014 by AxisofLogic.com
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