VIOLENCE WAS ALWAYS AT THE HEART OF EMPIRE... THE WESTERN EMPIRE IS NO EXCEPTION
It is time to imagine alternatives
All empires are held together by the threat of violence to crush resistance. But eventually, all empires fall.
In The New American Empire Canadian economist Rodrigue Tremblay notes that some empires have a 600 year megacycle. He cites three examples of different types:
· The Roman Empire, beginning with the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC and ending 476 CE at the hands of the Barbarians (622 years.)
· The Muslim Empire (an umbrella term of several caliphates and empires) lasted from the death of Mohammed in 632 to its final disintegration in 1258 at the hands of the Mongols. (626 years.)
· The Ottoman Empire begun in 1290, was defeated after siding with Germany in World War 1 in 1917 (627 years.)
Tremblay dates what he calls the Western Empire from the Europeans’ first contact with the Americas in 1492. According to the theory of the 600-year megacycle, it is due to collapse by 2092.
Tremblay believes that the Western Empire is led by an over-extended United States, and will fall under its own weight. Analysts have been predicting the decline of American hegemony for years.
In this analysis, I look at two metrics of imperial power (economic, military) and the strategy of Controlled Chaos for a brief assessment of the viability of the Western Empire.
Defining the US-led Western Empire
The rise of capitalism, superior military technologies, slavery and banking with interest fuelled Europe’s initial colonising project in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was a conquest of foreign labour, resources and markets that destroyed the fabric of traditional centuries-old societies.
Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and Russia were the first to conquer. Of these, by the end of the 19th century, the British Empire emerged as the front runner, ruling over two thirds of the world. After impoverishing itself in two World Wars, the British handed the reins of its power to the United States, falling back into second position as the US’ closest ally. The Yalta Conference of 1945 divided the world into two camps, socialist (headed by the Soviet Union) and capitalist (headed by the US.)
By the 1970s, a third of the world’s states was Marxist-led and aligned with the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, the US led regime-change operations, either through direct war or covert activities, against socialist leaders and movements in Africa, South America and Asia.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992 the US took on the mantle of the world’s number one superpower.
The US leads the Western World which typically includes most countries of the European Union as well as the United Kingdom, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Other allies included South Korea and Japan.
Some think that American power is beneficial. The historian Niall Ferguson believes that the US is most like the ancient Roman Empire.
Dollar Domination
Money is what distinguishes a commodity/profit-based economy from a barter economy. Most of the world’s countries pursue the accumulation of capital derived from the sales of goods and services, and valued in currency.
The US-led Western Empire’s reserve currency is mainly held in dollars and euros.
Dollars in reserve currencies have slipped somewhat but are still the largest in the world.
Dollar Dominance and the Rise of Nontraditional Reserve Currencies (imf.org)
Dollar Domination allows the US to float large debts at low interest. The US holds half of the world’s debt in dollars and rising. It also loans out the most money. This means that countries holding $8 trillion in US foreign debt have a vested interest in maintaining the value of the dollar. A weakened dollar would incur a big loss to top holders of US debt: Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Luxembourg.
The US uses Dollar Domination to cement geopolitical alliances. A 2022 study found that the majority (50-60 percent) of US assets held by foreign governments are consistently—over the past 10 years—held by countries with strong geopolitical relations with the US.
’Source: Weiss, Colin (2022). “Geopolitics and the U.S. Dollar’s Future as a Reserve Currency,” International Finance Discussion Papers 1359. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, https://doi.org/10.17016/IFDP.2022.1359.
Source: Enduring Preeminence (imf.org)
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans money to countries and in exchange, demands that social services and national assets are privatized, and opened up to multinational corporations. A study from 1986 to 2016 found that these loans with conditions increased income inequality in borrower countries.
Voting rights on the IMF executive board are allocated on the basis of financial contributions, which means wealthy countries hold the most votes.
The US has 16.52 percent of votes, closely followed by Japan, Germany and Britain.
China is on the rise. Its share of international wealth based on Gross Domestic Product has surpassed that of the US.
The International Monetary Fund reports that China holds 19.08% and The US holds 15.2% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP.) No other country comes close to these percentages.
Cutting off a country’s access to dollars is the economic weapon called sanctions which causes devastating humanitarian impacts on poorer nations. An assessment from 1990 to 2014 in 66 countries found that Western-imposed sanctions exacerbated the incidence of hunger and malnutrition in children under five years. Western sanctions don’t affect powerful and self-sufficient nations like Russia and China.
China offers the developing world loans and infrastructure building without imposing conditions such as privatizing resources. It is funding infrastructure and trade routes all over the world through its Belt and Road Initiative.
Verdict: Dollar Domination is not seriously challenged although China and other countries are attempting to trade in their own currencies.
Military Power
Dollar Domination means the US can afford loans to finance large military operations around the world. US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were funded mainly through borrowing, as are current wars. Information about military budgets is limited by secrecy requirements.
The United States’ global web of military bases and outposts is unprecedented in modern history. American military projects power in 85 countries. Its Commands span the world, excluding China and Russia, on sea and in air, space and cyberspace. Its Counter-Terrorism operations are a continuation of the War on Terror begun in 2001.
Source: Combatant Commands (defense.gov)
In recent years the US has conducted wars and intervened militarily in weaker nations: the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq and Yemen. Wars have either been lost or unresolved with disastrous post-war consequences. Economies have been ruined. It is estimated that direct and indirect war casualties of the War on Terror could be at least 4.5-4.6 million and counting.
Some US politicians talk of fighting a war with China if it invades Taiwan.
In the last major Taiwan crisis of the Cold War, in 1958, US generals threatened nuclear strikes on mainland China, as revealed by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg in 2021. It is likely that China and the US will fall back onto a position of nuclear deterrence as they did in 1958, similarly to how NATO and Russia avoided direct confrontation in Ukraine. Fighting a direct war with Iran is also unlikely because it’s armed with 600-mile range cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, long-range air defence systems, etc.
Verdict: Direct war against peer or near-peer states is unlikely. Military power is maintained through Dollar Domination, arms sales, interventions, military precense in 85 countries with quid pro quo alliances.
Economic Costs | Costs of War (brown.edu)
Laying Bare the Strategy of Controlled Chaos
Empires mythologize themselves as agents of unity and order, bringing progress and the rule of law to primitive and recalcitrant populations thousands of miles away.
The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India (2016) is a case study that undercuts the myth of the civilised British empire. Its author Jon Snow describes how creating chaos was its main strategy. Harvard historian Caroline Elkins exposes how skilled the British Empire was at hiding its use of terror in Legacy of Violence.
British imperialists manipulated, divided territory along class and ethnic lines, and used means of violence to create the most chaotic conditions possible.
Steven Mann[i] is the foreign policy expert and US Ambassador who identified and promoted the creation of chaos as a US foreign policy strategy. He clarifies that the goal of the US is ‘not international stability…Indeed, we already push a number of policies that accelerate chaos, whether we realize that or not: promoting democracy, pushing market reform, and spreading, through private sector means, mass communication.’ The latter is a reference to the soft power of the entertainment and information media. Market reform is code for promoting international corporations and privatisation.
Chaos is at the heart of the Empire’s command and control centre, Mann says. ‘No surprise to anyone who has worked in Washington is that policy making is chaotic. More precisely, it is turbulent and weakly chaotic… policy decisions are metastable... ‘
Chaos is not a bad thing: ‘We can learn a lot if we view chaos and reorganization as opportunities, and not pursue stability as an illusory goal…recognize that not all chaos is bad and not all stability is good…’
Belief in common international values is a waste of time: ‘We have to be illusion-free when it comes to the limits and the appropriateness of international law and similar structures… The long-term goals of international law are worthy ones, but we always have to count the costs of what we pay for that in the short term. There is another facet to this desire for stability that concerns me. It is the spread of peacekeeping forces and the increasing use of the U.S. military as peacekeepers…the belief in common international values‘ is a myth.
The US Ambassador believes in bringing ‘the system’ into a state of ‘political criticality,‘ [i.e. maximum tensions.] ‘Then the system, given certain conditions, will unavoidably enter chaos and transformation.’
Ambassador Mann also writes that ‘Given the US advantage in communications and growing global mobility capabilities, the virus (in the sense of an ideological infection) will be self-replicating and will expand chaotically. Therefore our national security will be preserved.’
Sources: Chapter 6 (dodccrp.org)
Chaos Theory and Strategic Thought // Parameters (US Army War College Quarterly, Vol. XXII, Autumn 1992, pp. 54-68).
Conclusion: The Chaos continues
The Western Empire is at the top of the heap of an unsustainable, fragile international system managed by mainly male elites.
Politics dictate the selective application of international laws. The US and allies have not waged a war by a vote at the United Nations Security Council since 1991. No country has. The campaign of genocide continues against the Palestinian people in Gaza, defying massive protests calling for a ceasefire. The ruling of the International Court of Justice of January 2024 is blatantly ignored, along with 70 years of United Nations resolutions finding Israel in gross violation of human rights.
Chaos reigns in Ukraine, upending economies even of Western allies like Germany, and reducing food supplies in Africa. The West continues to wage a proxy war in Ukraine with billions of dollars in aid but it is unlikely that Russia will be weakened or withdraw.
We can’t know whether the Western Empire will come to an end in seventy odd years as Rodrigue Tremblay seems to suggest. But like all Empires, fall it must.
At the beginning of 2024, just 15 countries have a woman Head of State. At the current rate, gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years.
It is time to imagine alternatives to the chaotic megacycles of Empire led by male elites.
Map below shows US military presence in 85 countries around the world. The Costs of War | Carnegie Reporter Fall 2023 | Carnegie Corporation of New York
[i] Stephen Mann was Ambassador to Turkmenistan and currently works as a consultant.
References
World Economic Outlook (October 2023) - GDP based on PPP, share of world (imf.org)
THE WAR ON GAZA: UNITED STATES, CHINA AND THE THEORY OF CONTROLLED CHAOS (substack.com)
Are we prepared as world citizens to enter total financial and political chaos if Dollar Domination is dismantled?