Mapping Trump’s Empire: Assets and
Liabilities
By James Petras
February 19, 2018 "Information
Clearing House"
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The US
empire spans the globe; it expands and
contracts, according to its ability to
secure strategic assets, willing and able to
further military and economic power to
counter emerging adversaries.
The map of empire is a shorthand measure of
the vectors, reach and durability of global
power and wealth. The map of empire is
changing -- adding and subtracting assets
and liabilities, according to the successes
and retreats of domestic and overseas power
centers. While the US empire has been
engaged in intense conflicts in the Middle
East , the imperial map has been enlarge
elsewhere at lower cost and greater success.
Enlarging the Empire
The US empire has substantially increased
its scope and presence in several regions,
especially in Latin America . The additions
and enlargements include Argentina , Brazil
, Colombia , Mexico , Central America , Peru
and the Caribbean . The most important asset
redrawing the empire in Latin America is
Argentina . The US has gained military,
economic and political advantages. In the
case of Argentina , political and economic
advances preceded military expansion.
The US provided ideological and political
support to secure the election of its client
Mauricio Macri. The new Argentine President
immediately transferred over $5 billion
dollars to the notorious Wall Street Vulture
speculator, Paul Singer, and proceeded to
open the floodgates for a lucrative
multi-billion dollar flow of financial
capital. President Macri then followed up by
inviting the Pentagon and US intelligence
services to establish military bases, spy
stations and training operations along its
borders. Equally important, Argentina
embraced the US directives designed to
overthrow the government of Venezuela ,
undermine Bolivia ’s nationalist government
under Evo Morales and pursue a policy of
US-centered regional integration.
Argentina : A Client without an Economic
Patron
While Argentina is a useful political and
military addition to the US empire, it lacks
access to the US market -- it still depends
on China - and has failed to secure a
strategic trade agreement with the European
Union. Washington has enlarged its military
presence with a one-legged client.
Colombia and Mexico , long time US client
states, have provided springboards for
enlarging US influence in Central America,
the Andean region and the Caribbean . In the
case of Colombia , the US has financed its
war of extermination against
anti-imperialist insurgents and their
peasant and working class supporters and
secured seven military bases as launch pad
for Washington ’s destabilization campaign
against Venezuela .
Mexico has served a multitude of military
and economic functions - from billion dollar
manufacturing platforms to multi-billion
dollar laundering of narco-profits to US
banks.
Brazil is the new addition to the empire
with the ousting and arrest of the leaders
of the Workers Party. The shift in political
and economic power has enhanced US influence
through its leverage over the wealthiest
country in the continent. In sum,the US has
enlarged imperial influence and control via
its acquisition of Latin America . There is
one caveat: At least in the cases of Brazil
and Argentina , the US advance is tentative
and subject to reversal, as it lacks firm
economic and political foundations.
If Latin America reflects an enlargement and
upsurge of US imperial influence, the rest
of the global map is mostly negative or at
best contradictory.
The empire-building mission has failed to
gain ground in Northeast Asia, the Middle
East and North Africa . In Europe, the US
retains influence but it appears to face
obstacles to enlarging its presence.
The key to the enlargement or decline of
empire revolves around the performance of
the US domestic economy.
Imperial Decline: China
The determination of the US in remapping the
global empire is most evident in Asia . The
most notable shift in US political and
economic relations in the region has taken
place with China ’s displacement of the US
as the dominant investment, trading
infrastructure building and lending country
in the region. Moreover, China has increased
its role as the leading exporter to the US ,
accumulating trade surpluses of hundreds of
billions of dollars each year. In 2017,
China ’s trade surplus reached $375 billion
dollars.
Against the relative economic decline of the
US , Washington has compensated by widening
the scope of its maritime-military presence
in the South China Sea, and increased its
air and ground forces in South Korea , Japan
, Australia , the Philippines and Guam . As
to how the bolstering of the US military
presence affects the US ‘re-mapping’ of its
imperial presence, it depends on the
dynamics of the US domestic economy and its
ability to retains its existing principal
military clients - South Korea, Japan,
Australia and the Philippines. Recent
evidence suggest that South Korea shows
signs of slipping outside of the US economic
and military orbit. Seoul has trade issues
with the US ‘protectionist agenda’ and
opportunities to expand its trading links
with China . Equally important, South Korea
has moved toward reconciliation with North
Korea , and downgraded the US military
escalation. As goes South Korea , so goes
the US military power base in northern Asia
.
The US military strategy is premised on
sustaining and expanding its client network.
However, its protectionist policies led to
the rejection of a multi-lateral trade
agreement, which erodes its economic ties
with existing or potential military
partners. In contrast to Latin America, the
US remaking of the imperial map has led to
economic shrinkage and military isolation in
Asia . US military escalation has poured
even more deadly strategic US arms into the
region, but failed to intimidate or isolate
China or North Korea .
Re-mapping the Middle East
The US has spent several trillion dollars
over the past two decades in the Middle East
, North Africa and West Asia . US
Intervention from Libya and Southern Sudan,
Somalia , across to Syria , Palestine , Iraq
, Iran and Afghanistan has resulted in
enormous costs and dubious advances. The
results are meagre except in terms of
suffering. The US has spread chaos and
destruction throughout Libya and Syria , but
failed to incorporate either into an
enlarged empire. The Middle East wars,
initiated at the behest of Israel , have
rewarded Tel Aviv with a sense of
invulnerability and a thirst for more, while
multiplying and unifying US adversaries.
Empires are not effectively enlarged through
alliances with with armed tribal, sectarian
and separatist organizations. Empires,
allied with disparate, fractured and
self-aggrandizing entities do not expand or
strengthen their global powers.
The US has waged war against Libya and lost
the political leverage and economic
resources it enjoyed during the Gaddafi
regime. It intervened in Somalia , South
Sudan and Syria , and has gained enclaves of
warring self-serving ‘separatists’ and
subsidized mercenaries. Afghanistan , the US
’ longest war in history, is an unmitigated
military disaster. After seventeen years of
warfare and occupation, the US is holed up
in the walled enclaves of the capital, Kabul
. Meanwhile, the puppet regime feeds on
multi-billion dollar monthly subsidies.
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Iraq is a ‘shared’ imperial outpost -- the
result of fifteen years of military
intervention. Kurdish clients, Sunni-Saudi
warlords, Shia militia, Baghdad kleptocrats
and US contractor-mercenaries all compete
for control and a larger piece of the
pillage. Every square meter of contested
‘terrain has cost the US five hundred
million dollars and scores of casualties.
Iran remains forever under threat, but
retains its independence outside of the
US-Saudi-Israeli orbit. The US geo-political
map has been reduced to dubious alliance
with Saudi Arabia and its micro-clients
among the Emirate statelets - which are
constantly fighting among themselves - as
well as Israel, the ‘client’ that openly
revels in leading its patron by the nose!
Compared to the period before the turn of
the millennium, the US imperial map has
shrunk and faces further retrenchment.
The US-NATO-EU Map
Russia has reduced and challenged the US
pursuit of a uni-polar global empire
following the recovery of its sovereignty
and economic growth after the disaster of
the 1990’s. With the ascent of President
Putin, the US-EU empire lost their biggest
and most lucrative client and source of
naked pillage.
Nevertheless, the US retains its political
clients in the Baltic , the Balkans and
Eastern and Central European regimes.
However, these clients are unruly and often
eager to confront a nuclear-armed Russia ,
confident that the US-NATO will intervene,
in spite of the probability of being
vaporized in a nuclear Armageddon.
Washington ’s efforts to recapture and
return Russia to vassalage have failed. Out
of frustration Washington has resorted to a
growing series of failed provocations and
conflicts between the US and the EU, within
the US between Trump and the Democrats; and
among the warlords controlling the Trump
cabinet.
Germany has continued lucrative trade ties
with Russia , despite US sanctions,
underscoring the decline of US power to
dictate policy to the European Union. The
Democratic Party and the ultra-militaristic
Clinton faction remains pathologically
nostalgic for a return to the 1990’s Golden
Age of Pillage (before Putin). Clinton ’s
faction is fixated on the politics of
revanchism . As a result, they vigorously
fought against candidate Donald Trump’s
campaign promises to pursue a new realistic
understanding with Russia . The Russia-Gate
Investigation is not merely a domestic
electoral squabble led by hysterical
‘liberals.’ What is a stake is nothing less
than a profound conflict over the remaking
of the US global map. Trump recognized and
accepted the re-emergence of Russia as a
global power to be ‘contained’, while the
Democrats campaigned to roll-back reality,
overthrow Putin and return to the robber
baron orgies of the Clinton years. As a
result of this ongoing strategic conflict,
Washington is unable to develop a coherent
global strategy, which in turn has further
weakened US influence in the EU in Europe
and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the intense Democratic
onslaught against Trump’s initial foreign
policy pronouncements regarding Russia
succeeded in destroying his ‘pivot to
realism’ and facilitated the rise of a
fanatical militaristic faction within his
cabinet, which have intensified the
anti-Russia policies of the Clintonite
Democrats. In less than a year, all of
Trump’s realist advisers and cabinet members
have been purged and replaced by
militarists. Their hard core confrontational
anti-Russia policy has become the platform
for launching a global military strategy
based on vast increases in military
spending, demands that the EU nations
increase their military budgets, and open
opposition to an EU-centered military
alliance, such as the one recently proposed
by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Despite President Trump’s campaign promises
to ‘pull-back’, the US has re-entered
Afghanistan , Iraq and Syria in a big way.
The Trump shift from global containment and
realism to ‘rollback and aggression’ against
Russia and China has failed to secure a
positive response from past and present
allies.
China has increased economic ties with the
EU. Russia and the EU share strategic gas
and oil trade ties. Domestically, the US
military budget deepens the fiscal deficit
and drastically threatens social spending.
This creates a scenario of increasing US
isolation with its futile aggression against
a dynamic and changing world.
Conclusion
The Trump remaking of the global empire has
had uneven results, which are mostly
negative from a strategic viewpoint.
The circumstances leading to new clients in
Latin America is significant but has been
more than countered by retreats in Asia,
divisions in Europe, turmoil domestically
and strategic incoherence.
Remaking global empires requires realism -
the recognition of new power alignments,
accommodation with allies and, above all,
domestic political stability balancing
economic interests and military commitments.
The key shift from realism toward a
recovered Russia to militarization and
confrontation has precipitated the breakdown
of the US as a unified coherent leader of a
global empire.
The US embraces prolonged losing wars in
peripheral regions while embracing
destructive trade wars in strategic regions.
It budgeted vast sums on non-productive
activities while impoverishing state and
local governments via sweeping tax ‘reform’
favoring the oligarchs.
Global remapping now involves a volatile and
impulsive US-driven empire incapable of
succeeding, while emerging powers are
immersed in regional power grabs.
There is no longer a coherent imperial
empire controlling the fate of the globe. We
live in a world of political maps centered
on regional powers and unruly clients, while
the most incompetent, gossip-mongering
politicians in Washington compete with an
arrogant, benighted President Trump and his
fractured regime.
James Petras is a Bartle Professor
(Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton
University, New York.
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The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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