A new American Empire ??      

By Kaliana Conesa

The Empire has been a fixture of history, with ancient China as the trailblazer, and contemporary America as our very own fledgling empire.  Although not technically an empire, for all practical purposes America serves every function of the traditional empires.  An ever-increasing portion of the world is effectively dictated by the ‘Structural Adjustment’ programs that have been steadily implemented as conditions for further loans to pay off old debts lent to third world nations by the American-controlled International Monetary Fund.  Needless to say, the ‘adjustments’ make the given nation conducive to America’s corporate interests, allowing them to produce commodities quickly and cheaply, rendering the capitol flow predominantly outbound and perpetuating the impoverishment and dependency of these countries by and on America.  With these nasty little programs alone, America has much of the world under its fat thumb.  But now, with America’s supposed legitimate military interests in the Middle East, there will soon be almost boundless opportunity to extend their imperialism; once they’ve reworked the socio-political climate of the Mid-East, it will be prime grounds for the importation of business, policies, and ultimately, the monolithic McWorld culture.  Not only will traditional cultures evaporate, which is a tragedy unto itself, but the consumerism that will be bred to benefit the Western oligarchs, whispering to the people to consume, acquire, get, forever aspiring to the impossible American dream, will further corrode the capacity of the Earth to sustain its prodigal populace, and nihilize the potentiality for autonomous communities to reemerge and exist in a less grossly unproportionate ratio between lifestyle and resources.  America as Empire is a phenomena only newly coming into its own, so it will be some time before it reaches its ‘golden age’.  However, “the one thing we now for sure about empires is that they do not last forever,” (Dissent Fall 2002, James B. Rule, Dissenting from the American Empire).  So the Fall of America will one day be history, but, given the basis of its empiredom, in some sort of post-apocalyptic world, either in ice age from the insulating clouds of smog or sweltering in a watery world of global warming and ozone holes, with only enough resources for a scattering of miserable subsistent beings. 

            And that is the essential difference between America and other oppressive empires of old, such as the infamous Roman. While the Caesars had their way with the world for several centuries, they wielded none of our devastating technological capacities.  Furthermore, not everyone could be a capitalist in those days—the foundation of society was the farming peasantry, making barely enough food for themselves, while other labourers and artisans largely traded their goods and services for the few true necessities of a moderately comfortable existence. In the links between labourers and craftspeople, the populace was self-sustaining. The aristocracy and men in power were, from the vantage of societal sustainability, an extraneous appendage, which nevertheless had achieved dominance over the new proletarian.  By achieving control over resources, and therefore of wealth, it was able to construct a massive body of armed forces, which expanded the land and human monopoly, whose resources then further enforced the might of the state, and so an in a circle wrought of viciousness, until Rome had power over much of the Western (and some of the Eastern) world.  But all though this was a sorry state of affairs for the common person, and many lives were completed without happiness or fulfillment, the damage the state inflicted was limited to human beings.  Surely, the mining required to create the swords, Armour, gold, and so on was not ecologically friendly, nor was the depletion of woodland to construct armadas and other great wooden structures, but their technological abilities did not outstrip those of the land to adjust to the onslaught and remain relatively ecologically stable, nor did they posses calamitous chemicals like nuclear waste, decomposing (or relentlessly composed, depending on what form of environmental damage pleases you) waste, and that most precious, seductive and lucrative substance, oil.  It makes all the gears of our world go round, but the consequences of its effect on the larger world, whose existence we of the west tend to forget, will be our undoing. 

So the American Empire can be regarded as just the latest in a long historical procession of empires, which will rise and, therefore, fall (all things which go up will eventually come down