Posted on 04/03/2012 8:07:57 AM PDT by IbJensen
Great empires, such as the Roman and British, were extractive. The empires succeeded because the value of the resources and wealth extracted from conquered lands exceeded the value of conquest and governance. The reason Rome did not extend its empire east into Germany was not the military prowess of Germanic tribes but Rome’s calculation that the cost of conquest exceeded the value of extractable resources.
The Roman Empire failed because Romans exhausted manpower and resources in civil wars fighting among themselves for power. The British empire failed because the British exhausted themselves fighting Germany in two world wars.
In his book The Rule of Empires (2010), Timothy H. Parsons replaces the myth of the civilizing empire with the truth of the extractive empire. He describes the successes of the Romans, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Spanish in Peru, Napoleon in Italy, and the British in India and Kenya in extracting resources. To lower the cost of governing Kenya, the British instigated tribal consciousness and invented tribal customs that worked to British advantage.
Parsons does not examine the American empire, but in his introduction to the book he wonders whether America’s empire is really an empire as the Americans don’t seem to get any extractive benefits from it. After eight years of war and attempted occupation of Iraq, all Washington has for its efforts is several trillion dollars of additional debt and no Iraqi oil. After 10 years of trillion-dollar struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Washington has nothing to show for it except possibly some part of the drug trade that can be used to fund covert CIA operations.
America’s wars are very expensive. George W. Bush and Barack Obama have doubled the national debt, and the American people have no benefits from it. No riches, no bread and circuses flow to Americans from Washington’s wars. So what is it all about?
The answer is that Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agribusiness and the Israel lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power. The U.S. Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the security state, and Americans’ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 percent. That is how the American empire functions.
The new empire is different. It happens without achieving conquest. The American military did not conquer Iraq and has been forced out politically by the puppet government that Washington established. There is no victory in Afghanistan, and the American military does not control the country after a decade of war.
In the new empire, success at war no longer matters. The extraction takes place by being at war. Huge sums of American taxpayers’ money have flowed into the American armaments industries and huge amounts of power into the Department of Homeland Security. The American empire works by stripping Americans of wealth and liberty.
This is why the wars cannot end and why if one does end, another starts. Remember when Obama came into office and was asked what the U.S. mission was in Afghanistan? He replied that he did not know what the mission was and that the mission needed to be defined.
Obama never defined the mission. He renewed the Afghan war without telling us its purpose. Obama cannot tell Americans that the purpose of the war is to build the power and profit of the military/security complex at the expense of American citizens.
This truth doesn’t mean that the objects of American military aggression have escaped without cost. Large numbers of Muslims have been bombed and murdered and their economies and infrastructure ruined, but not in order to extract resources from them.
It is ironic that under the new empire the citizens of the empire are extracted of their wealth and liberty in order to extract lives from the targeted foreign populations. Just like the bombed and murdered Muslims, the American people are victims of the American empire.
I agree with this article 100%... and I think this is also why Trump was striking a chord. People do not like war, but they can get behind it is they are getting something out of it. Iraq might have had support if the result was $.50/gallon gas. Same with Libya. Maybe if these countries that we defend, like Germany, paid us for our labor and materials plus a little margin, we wouldn’t be in such a hole. The fact that we are still funding Germany’s defense should have all of us puking. It has basically allowed them the debt leverege to conquer Europe again.
Don’t know if I agree with it all, but there is a lot to like in this article. We should never go to war without it being in America’s best interest and without a definable goal.
Those deluded fools, like Paul Craig Roberts, who continually want argue this ignorant clown theory simply expose themselves as tin foil hat wearing fools who understand neither what an empire is, nor the current US political system.
Even if you took Roberts deluded ranting seriously and totally zeroed out US military/Foreign aid spending, you would still run around about an $800 billion annual Federal Deficit.
It is our entire Government structure, not just the "military industrial complex and the Israel lobby" that is the problem
Agree with your point about foreign aid, but the military industrial complex and the Israel lobby are a problem as well... and I say that as an employee of a defense contractor so I benefit from it. I am all for having Israel’s back militarily, but they should be paying us for it, not the other way around. Same with Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, Poland, Georgia, etc.
Having bases in Europe allows the US to punch beyond its weight. Aircraft Carriers can’t do it all.
The US can project power well beyond our borders because we have military bases well beyond our borders.
Bringing the troops home would eventually save money but we would loose all of that money and more when we had to reestablish those military assets. Keeping the peace is much cheaper than reestablishing the peace.
What these bases have bought us is keeping large conflicts from developing from small conflicts. From these forward bases we can quickly project military power to hot spots in the region. These bases also have large well equipped hospitals for treating casualties and provide our troops the best care available in the region.
At first glance it may seem like we are providing Europe free defense but think a second time and you may see that we are preventing our entry in to the Third World War which would be much more costly.
This is not entirely accurate. The common feature with all empires is colonization... for loot, dominance, territory, etc...actually for any number of reasons.
The US never had the kind of expansive ‘empire’ like the author suggests (Rome, Britain, etc.)
The wording and logic seem careless in this read.
I disagree. If we were to leave Germany today, Germany would be forced to pony up and fill their own void. Us being there does nothing but allow them to fund their own socialism without running huge deficits and allow them to project power and financially blackmail our allies in the EU. Unless there is an imminent threat or we are gaining wealth or resources, I oppose projecting power well beyond our borders.
“This is not entirely accurate. The common feature with all empires is colonization... for loot, dominance, territory, etc...actually for any number of reasons.
The US never had the kind of expansive ‘empire’ like the author suggests (Rome, Britain, etc.)”
Really? Then what was the point of “manifest destiny”?
PCR (the author) sounds like a Buchanan acolyte, or a tin foil hat wearer, take your pick. There are advantages and disadvantages about being in Europe. After WWII, U.S. government leaders recognized that to allow a “free market” in ideology to take place in the world was to invite disaster; see Germany and Japan, and the U.S.S.R. afterwards. A good question to ask is, what would likely change in European foreign policy if we weren’t based there? Or in Japan?
I don’t know.
But I always associate the concept of Empire with a single and un-elected leader who assumes lifetime rule (displacing legitimate leaders either by force or plebiscite) and/or a monarchic leadership (also an un-elected, usually hereditary, dynastic arrangement).
Also, Empire suggests, in my thinking, the utter exploitation of people and resources subject to colonial dominion...with no hope or guarantee of representation at any point in the process.
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