The
Imperial Empire: The Sun Never Sets but the Mote
remains in the Emperor’s Eye
Post-colonial empires are complex
organizations. They are organized on a
multi-tiered basis, ranging from relative
autonomous national and regional allies to
subservient vassal states, with variations in
between.
By James Petras
In the
contemporary period, the idea of empire does not
operate as a stable global structure, though it
may aspire and strive for such. While the US is
the major imperial power, it does not dominate
some leading global political-economic and
military powers, like Russia and China.
Imperial powers, like the US, have
well-established regional satellites but have
also suffered setbacks and retreats from
independent local economic and political
challengers.
Empire
is not a fixed structure rigidly embedded in
military or economic institutions. It contains
sets of competing forces and relations, which
can change over time and circumstances.
Moreover, imperial allies and clients do not
operate through fixed patterns of submission.
While there is submission to general agreements
on ideology, military doctrine and economic
policy identified with imperial rulers, there
are cases of vassal states pursuing their own
links with non-imperial markets, investors and
exporters.
If the
global world of imperial power is complex and
indeterminate to some degree, so is the internal
political, economic, administrative and military
structure of the imperial state. The imperial
political apparatus has become more heavily
weighted on the side of security institutions,
than diplomatic and representative bodies.
Economic institutions are organized for overseas
markets dominated by multi-national corporations
against local markets and producers. ‘Market
economy’ is a misnomer.
Military-security institutions and budgets
utilize most state functionaries and public
resources, subordinating markets and diplomatic
institutions to military priorities.
While
imperial state operations function through their
military and civilian administrative apparatus,
there are competitive socio-political-class,
ethnic and military configurations to consider.
In
analyzing the effective or ‘real power’ of the
principle institutions of the imperial state,
one must distinguish between goals and results,
purpose and actual performance. Often
commentators make sweeping statements about
‘imperial power and dominance’, while in fact,
some policies may have ended in costly losses
and retreats due to specific national, local or
regional alignments.
Hence
it is crucial to look closely at the imperial
interaction between its various tiers of allies
and adversaries in order to understand the
immediate and long-term structures and direction
of imperial state policy.
This
essay will first describe the leader-follower
imperial relationships in four zones: US-Western
Europe-Canada, Asia-Pacific, Middle East-Africa
and Latin America and identify the terrain of
struggles and conflict. This will be followed by
an examination of the contemporary ‘map of
empire’. We will then contrast the alignment of
forces between Western imperial allies and their
current adversaries. In the final section we
will look at the sources of fragmentation
between the imperial state and economic
globalization as well as the fissures and
fallout between imperial allies and followers.
Tiers of
Imperial Allies in the West
Western
imperialism is a complex pyramidal structure
where the dominant United States interacts
through a five-tier system. There is a vertical
and horizontal configuration of leader and
follower states that cannot be understood
through simplistic ’solar system’ metaphors of
‘centers, semi-peripheries and peripheries’.
Western
imperial power extends and overlaps from the
first tier to the second, that is, from the
United States to France, England, Germany, Italy
and Canada. The scope and depth of US military,
bureaucratic, political and economic
institutions form the framework within which the
followers operate.
The
second tier of empire ties the top tier to the
bottom tiers by providing military support and
economic linkages, while securing autonomous
levers to enlarge its own geo-political spheres.
The
third tier of imperialism in the West comprises
Poland, Scandinavia, the Low Countries and
Baltic States. These are geographically and
economically within the sphere of Western Europe
and militarily dependent on US-NATO military
dominance. The third tier is a heterogeneous
group, ranging from highly advanced and
sophisticated welfare-states like Sweden,
Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium to
relatively backward Baltic dependencies like
Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and Poland. They
exercise few independent power initiatives and
depend on protection from the Tier 1 and 2
imperial centers.
‘Tier
four’ states include countries like Greece,
Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Czech Republic and
Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. These are
essentially satellite nations, who follow the
leader imperial countries, providing bases,
troops and tourist resorts. In general, they
have no independent voice or decision-making
presence in regional or global conflicts.
Despite their instability and the occasional
outbursts of radical dissent, , the lower tier
countries have yet to break with the higher
tiers controlled by the EU and NATO hierarchy.
The
fifth-tier satellites include recently
fabricated mini-states like Albania, Kosovo,
Macedonia, Slovenia and Croatia, which act as
military bases, tourist havens and economic
dependencies. They are the outcome of the
first-tier and second-tier policies of ‘regime
change’ and state dismemberment through NATO-led
wars designed to destroy any remnant of the
multi-ethnic social welfare states and degrade
Russian influence, especially in Yugoslavia.
Mapping
the leader-follower structure of the Western
empire depends on the distribution of military
resources and their location along the Russian
border. The US-EU Empire faces the problem of
meeting rising economic demands from the
multi-tiered empire, which has exceeded their
capacity. This had led to shifting trade
alliances and independent pressure to ‘go
beyond’ the dictates of the imperial leaders.
Leader
imperial states have tightened economic and
political control over their followers -
especially when the military consequences of
empire have disrupted everyday life, security
and the economy. An ongoing example is the flood
of millions of desperate refugees entering
Europe, as a result of US imperial war policies
in the Middle East and North Africa. This mass
influx threatens the political and social
stability of Europe. Following the US putsch in
the Ukraine and the inevitable response from
Moscow, Washington ordered an economic blockade
of Russia. The economic consequences of
US-imposed sanctions against the giant Russian
market has severely affected European exports,
especially agriculture and heavy industry and
caused instability in the energy market which
was dominated by the now banned Russian
petroleum and gas producers.
The
Eastern Imperial Empire
The US
imperial design in East Asia is vastly different
in structure, allies and adversaries from that
in the West. The leaders and followers are very
heterogeneous in the East. The multi-tier US
Empire in Asia is designed to undermine and
eventually dominate North Korea and China.
Since
the Second World War, the US has been the center
of the Pacific empire. It also suffered serious
military setbacks in Korea and Indo-China. With
the aid of its multi-tiered auxiliaries, the US
has recovered its influence in Indo-China and
South Korea.
The US
position, as the first-tier imperial power, is
sustained by second-tier imperial allies, such
as Australia, New Zealand, India and Japan.
These
second-tier allies are diverse entities. For
example, the Indian regime is a reticent
latecomer to the US Empire and still retains a
higher degree of autonomy in dealing with China.
In contrast, while Australia and New Zealand
retained their dependent military ties with the
US, they are increasingly dependent on Chinese
commodity markets and investments.
Japan,
a powerful traditional economic ally of the US,
remains a weak military satellite of the
US-Asian Empire.
Third-tier countries include South Korea,
Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and
Indonesia. South Korea is the US’s most
important military dependency, despite which it
has moved steadily closer to the Chinese market,
as has the populous Indonesian Republic.
Taiwan,
while a military dependency of the US, has
stronger ethnic and economic links to China than
the US.
The
Philippines is a backward US military
vassal-state and former colony, which retains
its legacy as an imperial enclave against China.
Thailand and Malaysia have remained as
third-tier imperial auxiliaries, subject to
occasional nationalist or democratic popular
upsurges.
The
fourth-tier countries within US East Asian
Empire are the least reliable because they are
relatively ‘new associates’. Vietnam, Cambodia,
Laos and Myanmar have transformed from
independent statist economies to US-Japanese and
Chinese-centered markets, financial and military
dependencies.
The US
Empire has focus on confronting China through
its military, controlling its South China
trading routes and trying to form regional
economic trade agreements, which exclude China.
However, the imperial multi-tiered structure has
been mostly limited to various US military
harassment and joint ‘war games’ exercises with
its clients and ‘allies’. This has had minimal
economic input from even their closest allies.
The US Eastern Empire has lost significant
economic counterparts because of its
confrontational approach to China. Its
provocative trade-pacts have failed to undermine
China’s dynamic economy and trade.
The US
Eastern Empire may dominate its multi-tiered
allies, vassals and recent converts through its
military. It may succeed in provoking a serious
military confrontation with China. But it has
failed to re-establish a dominant structure
within Asia to sustain US imperial superiority
in the event of a war.
China
drives the growth and dynamism of Asia and is
the vital market for regional products as well
as a crucial supplier of minerals, precious
metals, industrial products, high tech and
service activity throughout the region.
The US
has occasionally turned to its ‘fifth-tier’
allies among non-state entities in Tibet and
Hong Kong and among ethno-Islamist
terrorist-separatist groups in Western China,
using ‘human rights’ propaganda, but these have
had no significant impact in weakening China or
undermining its regional influence.
The
Eastern Empire can wield none of the economic
leverage in China that the Western empire has
with Russia. China has established more
effective economic relations in Asia than Russia
has with the West. However, Russia has greater
military capability and a more committed
political will to push back Western imperial
military threats than China. In recent years,
Beijing has adopted a policy of strengthening
its high tech military and maritime
capabilities. In the wake of the US putsch in
the Ukraine and the West’s economic sanctions
against Russia, Moscow has been forced to
bolster strategic military-economic ties with
China. Joint security exercises between Russia
and China , as well as greater trade, pose
formidable counter-weights to the multi-tiered
alliances linking the US and EU to Japan,
Australia and South Korea.
In
other words, the diverse geographic multi-tiered
US imperial structures in the East do not and
cannot, dominate a strategic top-tiered alliance
of Russia and China, despite their lack of other
strong military allies and client states.
If we
look beyond European and Asian spheres of Empire
to the Middle East and Latin America, the US
imperial presence is subject to rapidly evolving
power relations. We cannot simply add or
subtract from the US and Russian and Chinese
rivalries, because these do not necessarily add
up to a new ‘imperial’ or ‘autonomous’ center of
power.
Imperial
Power in the Middle East: The Multi-Tiered
Empire in Retreat
The US
imperial empire in the Middle East occupies a
pivotal point between West and East; between the
top and secondary tiers of empire; between
Islamic and anti-Islamic alliances.
If we
extend the ‘Middle East’ to include South Asia
and North Africa we capture the dimensions of
the Western imperial quest for supremacy.
The
imperial empire in the Middle East reflects US
and Western European tiers of power as they
interact with local counterparts and satellite
states.
The
US-EU top tiers link their goals of encircling
and undermining Russia and regional adversaries,
like Iran, with the regional ambitions of their
NATO ally, Turkey.
Imperial powers in the Middle East and North
Africa operate through local allies, auxiliaries
and satellites as they compete for territorial
fragments and power bases following the US ‘wars
for regime changes’.
With
the US at the top, the European Union, Israel,
Turkey and Saudi Arabia comprise the second-tier
allies. Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq and Jordan, which
are financial and political dependencies of the
empire, rank as third-tier. The fourth-tier
includes the Gulf states, the Kurd war lords,
Lebanese and Yemeni local puppets of the Saudi
Monarchy and Israel’s client Palestinian
Bantustan in the West Bank.
Saudi
and Western-funded regional terrorist groups
aspire to fourth-tier membership following a
successful ‘regime change’ and territorial
fragmentation in Syria.
The
terrorist enclaves are located in Syria, Iraq
and Libya and play a ’specific and
multi-purpose’ role in undermining adversaries
in order to restore imperial dominance.
The
Middle East Empire is the least stable region
and the most susceptible to internal rivalries.
Israel
exercises a unique and unrivaled voice in
securing US financial and military resources and
political support for its brutal colonial
control over Palestine and Syrian territories
and captive populations. Saudi Arabia finances
and arms autonomous Islamist terrorist groups as
part of their policy of advancing the kingdom’s
political- territorial designs in Pakistan,
Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran and the
Gulf. Turkey has its own regional ambitions and
terrorist mercenaries. Within this volatile
context, the US Empire finds itself competing
with its auxiliaries for control over the same
Middle East clients.
The
Middle East Empire is fraught with powerful
adversaries at each point of contention. The
huge, independent nation of Iran stands as a
powerful obstacle to the West, Saudis, and
Israel and competes for influence among
satellites in the Gulf, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and
Lebanon. Hezbollah, a powerful nationalist group
within Lebanon, has played a crucial role
defending Syria against dismemberment and is
linked with Iran against Israeli intervention.
Russia has military and trade relations with
Syria and Iran in opposition to the Western
imperial alliance. Meanwhile, the US imperial
satellite states in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya,
and Egypt are rapidly disintegrating in the face
of gross corruption, Islamist resurgence, policy
incompetence and economic crises.
To
speak formally of a ‘Western imperial empire’ in
vast sections of the Middle East and North
Africa is a misnomer for several reasons:
In
Afghanistan, the Nationalist-Islamist Taliban
and its allies control most of the country
except for a few garrison cities.
Yemen,
Libya and Iraq are battleground states,
contested terrain with nothing remotely
resembling a functioning imperial domain. Iraq
is under siege from the North by Kurds, the
center by ISIS, the South by nationalist Shi’a
militias and mass organizations in contention
with grossly corrupt US imperial-backed puppets
in Baghdad.
The
US-EU mercenaries in Syria have been defeated by
Syrian-Russian-Hezbollah-Iranian forces aided by
independent Kurds.
Israel
behaves more like a militarist ’settler’
predator usurping historical Palestine than a
reliable imperial collaborator.
So far,
the empire project in the Middle East and North
Africa has been the costliest and least
successful for Western imperialism. First and
foremost, responsibility for the current Middle
East imperial debacle falls directly on the top
tier political and military leaders who have
pursued policies and strategies (regime change
and national dismemberment) incompatible with
imperial precepts that normally guide empires.
The top
tier of the US imperial-military elite follows
Israeli military prerogatives, as dictated by
the Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) embedded
within the US state apparatus. Their policy has
been to destroy Islamic and Arab-nationalist
structures and institutions of power - not
conquer and reconfigure them to be absorbed into
Western imperial institutions . . . as the US
was able to do in Asia and Europe. This parrots
the Israeli- settler policy of ‘erasure’ and has
made the region totally unstable for imperial
trade. The wanton dismemberment of the whole
social-political-security institutional
structure of Iraq is a prime example of the
Israeli policy of ‘erasure’ promoted by US
Zionist advisers on a grand scale. The same
advisers remain within the top tier imperial
decision-making apparatus despite 15 years of
abject failure.
Western
empire’s multi-tier structure, from the US and
Western Europe at the top to Kosovo at the
bottom, have followed imperial imperatives. In
contrast Israeli imperatives direct US military
power into perpetual war in the Middle East
through the influential ZPC.
This
divergent path and the inability to change
course and rectify imperial policy has brought
disastrous defeats, which have repercussions
throughout the global empire, especially freeing
up competitors and rivals in Asia and Latin
America.
Tiers of
Empire in Latin America
The US
imperial empire expanded in Central America and
the Caribbean during most of the 19th CENTURY
and reigned supreme in the first half of the
20th century. The exceptions included the
nationalist revolutions in Haiti in the early
19th century and Paraguay in the mid-19th
century. After the US Civil War, the British
Empire in Latin America was replaced by the US,
which established a dominant position in the
region, except during the successful Mexican
Revolution.
Several
major challenges have emerged to US imperial
dominations in the middle of the 20th century.
The
centerpiece of anti-imperialism was the Cuban
Revolution in 1959, which provided political,
ideological and material backing to a
continent-wide challenge. Earlier a socialist
government emerged in Guyana in 1953 but was
overthrown.
In
1965, the Dominican Revolution challenged a
brutal US backed-dictator but was defeated by a
direct US invasion.
In
1970-73 a democratic socialist government was
elected in Chile and overthrown by a bloody CIA
coup.
In 1971
a ‘workers and peasants’ coalition backed a
nationalist military government in Bolivia only
to be ousted by a US-backed military coup.
In
Argentina (Peron), Brazil (Goulart) and Peru
(Alvarez), nationalist-populist governments,
opposed to US imperialism, were elected between
the middle 1960’s to the mid 1970’s. Each were
overthrown by US-military coups. Apart from the
Cuban revolution, the US Empire successfully
counter-attacked, relying on US and local
business elites to back the military juntas in
repressing anti-imperialist and nationalist
political parties and movements.
The US
Empire re-established its hegemony, based on a
multi-tiered military and market directorate,
headed at the top by the US. Argentina, Brazil
and Chile comprised the second-tier, a group of
military dictatorships engaged in large-scale
state terror and death squad assassinations and
forcing hundreds of thousands into exile and
prison.
The
third-tier was based on US surrogates, generals
and oligarch-families in Colombia, Venezuela,
Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay.
The
fourth-tier of satellite regimes included
Central-America, except Nicaragua, and all of
the Caribbean, except Cuba and (briefly)
Grenada.
The US
Empire ruled through predator allies and
satellite oligarchs and successfully imposed a
uniform imperial structure based on neo-liberal
policies. US-centered regional trade, investment
and military pacts ensured its imperial
supremacy, through which they sought to blockade
and overthrow the Cuban revolution. The US
imperialist system reached its high point
between the mid-1970’s to the late 1990’s - the
Golden Age of Plunder. After the pillage of the
1990’s, the empire faced a massive wave of
challenges from popular uprisings, electoral
changes and the collapse of the corrupt
auxiliary neo-liberal regimes.
The US
imperial empire faced powerful challenges from
popular-nationalist regimes from 1999 to 2006 in
Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and
Ecuador. Dissident liberal-nationalist
governments in Uruguay, Honduras and Paraguay
posed their own challenges to imperial control.
The US
empire was bogged down in multiple imperial wars
in the Middle East (Iraq, Libya, Syria) Asia
(Afghanistan) and Europe (Ukraine, Georgia,
Yugoslavia), which undermined its capacity to
intervene militarily in Latin America.
Cuba,
the hemispheric center of the anti-imperialist
politics, received economic aid from Venezuela
and strengthened its diplomatic, trade and
security alliances with the anti-interventionist
center-left. This provided an impetus to the
formation of independent regional trade
organizations, which traded heavily with US
imperial rivals, China, Iran and Russia during
the ‘commodity boom’.
While
the US imperial empire in Latin America was in
retreat, it had not suffered a strategic defeat
because it maintained its powerful business,
political and state auxiliary structures, which
were ready to regroup and counter-attack at the
‘right moment’ - the end of the ‘global
commodity boom’.
By the
end of the first decade of the 21st century, the
US Empire counter-attacked, with their
political-military clients taking power in the
weakest links, Honduras and Paraguay. Since
then, neo-liberal extremists have been elected
to the presidency in Argentina; a corrupt
oligarch-led congress has impeached the
President of Brazil; and the ground is being
prepared to seize control in Venezuela.
The US
Empire re-emerged in Latin America after a
decade-long hiatus with a new or re-invigorated
multi-tier structure.
At the
top-tier is the United States, dependent on
enforcement of its control through satellite
military and business elites among the
second-tier countries, Colombia, Argentina,
Brazil and Mexico.
At the
third-tier are Chile, Peru, Uruguay and the
business-political elites in Venezuela, linked
to the US and tier-two countries.
The
fourth-tier is dominated by weak submissive
regimes in Central America (Panama, Guatemala,
Honduras and El Salvador), the Caribbean
(especially Santa Domingo, Haiti and Jamaica)
and Paraguay.
The US
has re-assembled its imperial structure in Latin
American rapidly, creating an assemblage which
is extremely fragile, incoherent and subject to
disintegration.
The new
neo-liberal regime in Argentine, the centerpiece
of the empire, immediately faces the triple
threat of mass unrest, economic crisis and a
weak regime under siege.
Brazil’s new US neo-liberal constellation of
characters are all under indictment for
corruption and facing trials, while economic
recession and social polarization is undermining
their ability to consolidate imperial control.
Venezuela’s rightwing auxiliaries lack the
economic resources to escape the demise of the
oil economy, hyperinflation and the virulent
internecine conflicts within the Right.
The US
imperial empire in Latin America could best
operate through links with the Asian-Pacific
trade pact. However, even with new Asian ties
the Latin satellites exhibit none of their Asian
counterparts’ stability. Moreover, China’s
dominant economic role in both regions has
limited US hegemony over the principal props of
the empire.
The Myth
of a US Global Empire
The
‘narrative’ of a US global empire is based on
several profound misconceptions, which have
distorted the capacity of the US to dominate
world politics. The US regional empires operate
in contested universes where powerful counter
forces limit imperial dominance.
In
Europe, Russia is a powerful counterforce,
bolstered by its growing alliances in Asia
(China), the Middle East (Iran) and, to a
limited extent, by the BRIC countries.
Moreover, Washington’s multi-tiered allies in
Europe have occasionally followed autonomous
policies, which include Germany’s oil-gas
independent agreements with Russia, eroding US
efforts to undermine Moscow.
While
it may appear that the ‘imperial military,
banking, multi-national corporate structure’, at
a high level of abstraction, operates within a
common imperial enterprise, on issues of
everyday policy-making, budgeting, war policies,
trade agreements, diplomacy, subversion and the
capitalist market-place there are multiple
countervailing forces.
The
empire’s multi-tiered allies have their own
demands as well as sacrifices imposed on the US
imperial center.
Internal members of the imperial structure
define competing priorities via domestic power
wielders.
The US
Empire has extended its military operations to
over 700 bases across the world but each
operation has been subject to restraints and
reversals.
US
multi-nationals have multi-billion dollar
operations but they are forced to adjust to the
demands of counter-imperial powers (China). They
evade almost a trillion dollars of US taxes
while absorbing massive assets from the US
Treasury in the form of subsidies,
infrastructure and security arrangements.
In sum,
while the sun may never set on the empire, the
emperors have lost their sight.