Wider Still and Wider: The Continuing Growth of the American Empire

Enemies of the United States have enjoyed the spectacle of its mismanaged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 and its economic difficulties since 2007. They have celebrated these events as showing the fragility of American power, as being the prelude to the collapse of the worldwide American empire. However, reports of the death of the American empire are premature. Indeed some would say that American power has been growing around the world since 2001 rather than diminishing.

Nevertheless it cannot be denied that the American empire faces challenges. In some areas the natives are getting restless. Strangely these malcontents are not Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East, but Latin American nationalists in America's own backyard. To the decades-old defiance of communist Cuba has been added the populist movement of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. His anti-gringo rhetoric has inspired other South American countries, such as Bolivia and Ecuador, to defy their American masters. The recent military bases deal between the USA and Colombia, its most loyal Latin American vassal state, shows that the American empire is preparing the infrastructure from which to launch military action against those states which challenge its dominance.

Much is made of the growing influence of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economic superpowers, so one might expect Brazil to take a leading role in opposing American military expansion in South America. Instead, crippled by its bitter internal social divisions, Brazil raised only a mild protest at the Colombia bases deal and accepted unconvincing American assurances that the bases would not pose a threat to any other country in the region. However wealthy Brazil becomes, it is very unlikely to defy the dictates coming from Washington in the near future.

If Latin America is restive, Europe seems even more securely under American control. After half a century France has finally given up its pretence that it is independent of 'les Anglo Saxons'. Despite President Sarkozy's Napoleonic gestures, he has led his country back to the subordinate position it occupied in the American empire before President Charles de Gaulle came to power and created the Fifth Republic in 1958.

All Europe up to Russia's borders, with the possible exception of the discontented Serbs, is now largely subservient to the USA. For their own administrative convenience, the Americans support the creation of a single European state with its capital at Brussels. However, if the European Union authorities in Brussels do not bend to its will, the USA is still ready to undermine their position by having direct dealings with individual European states. This is particularly true with regard to the ex-communist countries of central and eastern Europe. Those states are keenly aware that the European Union, an economic power but a military eunuch, will never protect them from a resurgent Russia, so they are happy to have direct links with their American protector.

Africa is almost as subservient to the United States as Europe, but there are some problem areas. Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia still resist American dominance in their different ways, but their resistance is not such as to demand actual American military intervention in their affairs. For a time it seemed that the sufferings of people in Darfur might serve as a pretext for American intervention in Sudan, but an American invasion of yet another Islamic country was eventually seen as a bad idea. Eritrea's current dictator is an annoyance to America, but not so much that action needs to be taken against him.

Somalia is an odd case, since at least two of the three constituent parts of that fractured state might well be ready to accept American assistance, but Washington declines to offer it. The self-declared independent state of Somaliland and the semi-autonomous region of Puntland are not inherently anti-American like the Islamist insurgents in southern Somalia, but America largely ignores them. The USA, so keen to tear Yugoslavia apart during the 1990s, is perversely determined to keep Somalia at least nominally intact.

The Middle East is the cockpit of America's struggle against its chosen enemy Islamic fundamentalism, but whatever the feelings of ordinary Muslims in the region, their national governments are almost all subservient to America. Should any of these states be tempted to stray, America's regional enforcer, Israel, will be unleashed on them. Of Israel's old Arab enemies, only Syria is still unreconciled. In geostrategic terms, Turkey is probably more important than Israel in maintaining American hegemony in the Middle East. In recent years Turkey, whether under secular or moderate Islamic governments, has taken a more independent line in its foreign policy, but the country seems unlikely to stray far from its alliance with America.

The great American enemy in the Middle East is of course the Islamic Republic of Iran, a state which has defied American power for thirty years and inflicted a number of humiliations on the country it calls the 'Great Satan', such as the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran. Whatever Iran's current nuclear ambitions and its supposed 'existential threat' to Israel, it is chiefly hated by American politicians and generals because it has successfully resisted American hegemony for so long. Powerful forces in both the USA and Israel continue to work for a military attack on Iran. The rest of the world should hope their plans never come to fruition.

Now that conflict in Iraq has been reduced to 'an acceptable level of violence', it is the resistance of the Taliban in Afghanistan which poses the greatest threat to American imperial ambitions. President Obama is now planning to increase US forces in Afghanistan and conclude the war before the end of his presidential term. Yet even if America was to be defeated in Afghanistan, such a reverse would be no more fatal to the American empire than its earlier defeat in Vietnam. A Taliban Afghanistan, like communist Vietnam after 1975, can be quarantined and left to rot.

The most important recent development in South Asia for the American empire has not involved the strife-torn countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has involved India. The recent nuclear treaty between India and the USA is, as many Indian politicians and commentators have pointed out, a first step on India's road away from national independence and towards becoming a member of America's worldwide alliance of subservient states. Thus a second BRIC country will be brought into the American orbit. Both Brazil and India may prosper economically, but the USA will never allow them to challenge its military domination of the world.

In South-East Asia most countries are long-standing allies or dependents of the USA. The principal exception is Myanmar (formerly Burma) whose military junta has ruled for decades, ignoring American hostility. The generals may continue to do so as long as they keep their country largely cut off from the rest of the world. Further north, economic powers such as South Korea and Japan are close allies of America, and whatever the bold statements of the new Japanese government, it seems most unlikely that Japan will seek any degree of military and strategic independence from the United States. Indeed Japan remains the only foreign country where a large American fleet, in this case the Seventh Fleet, is permanently based.

America's chief problem in East Asia is North Korea. Nuclear-armed, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous, North Korea engages the United States in cat-and-mouse negotiations which can swing from cordial to crisis almost overnight. Given its growing internal turmoil, North Korea may collapse before the USA is forced to take decisive action against it, but there is always the danger of some last-minute missile strike before the communist dictatorship implodes.

This short survey of the world must conclude with the last two BRIC countries: Russia and China. Although both are definitely outside the control of the American empire, they are very different states. Despite its enormous natural resources, Russia remains in a fragile condition both economically and militarily. Despite the progress made in the Putin years, Russia is still on the edge. It could advance to regain its superpower status, or it could collapse again into the chaos of the Yeltsin period. Russia and China are allies of a sort through membership of bodies like the Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation, but they still eye each other warily. Perhaps the perceived threat from America is all that keeps them together. As Russophobia is now the only acceptable racist doctrine in the Western world, an early rapprochement between Russia and America seems unlikely.

If America no longer fears Russia nor wants the country as a friend, the opposite is true with regard to China. Certain to be the world's dominant economic superpower by mid-century, China at present poses no major military threat to the USA, but its military forces will inevitably expand as its economic power grows. At present the nature of the Chinese 'threat' is deliberately exaggerated by the American military-industrial complex to get more defence funds out of Congress, but it may well be a self-fulfilling prophecy. America certainly needs China's economic support, not least in buying vast amounts of US government bonds, and, despite protectionist urges within America, the USA must avoid offending its increasingly powerful rival.

That China should continue to provide financial support for its supposed rival is not unusual. In the twentieth century the United States was the rising world power, both economically and militarily, yet it was willing to provide financial support to its fading one-time rival Britain. However, one of the conditions of providing such aid was that Britain should dismantle its worldwide empire. It is not unlikely that China will impose similar conditions on the United States at some point in the future if the American empire continues to be dependent on Chinese financial support.

Nevertheless such a scenario is probably decades away. Despite the gleeful forecasts of America's enemies, the American empire is still doing well, indeed expanding its influence around the world. The burden of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has been counter-balanced by France's return to the American imperial fold and by India's decision to move into the American orbit. Two of the four BRIC nations, Brazil and India, are now under increasing American influence. Of the other two, Russia is still a fragile outsider, while at the moment China believes it is in its interests to bankroll American power, although it is likely to impose more conditions on that assistance in the future.

Even if the American empire went financially bankrupt, it might not matter in the short term. The Spanish empire, undoubtedly the greatest military power in Europe and much of the world in the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century, defaulted on its debts a dozen times before its final collapse. Few creditors are prepared to get tough with a debtor that remains a dominant military power. Whatever its current problems, the American empire will probably survive for many decades to come.