Chris Hedges | America in the Time of Empire
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_112707H.shtml
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8 Responses to “Chris Hedges | America in the Time of Empire”
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To talk about either America or The Soviet Union as having ‘Empires’ makes me scratch my head. My view of history is that the last Empire was The British Empire, and there hasn’t been one since. The Soviets would like to have had a communist empire, but America through it’s days of greatest power has sought only to create some stability in The Word and enrich itself at the same time. This is not the same as building an Empire.
Posted on 28-Nov-07 at 2:09 am | PermalinkAmerica has many internal problems at present, in a world where the balance of power is markedly shifting, but to see these problems as the collapse of an Empire, rather than the atrophy of old, economic structures in a Country that needs to – and almost certainly will re-invent itself – is colorful, but not acurate.
Never, in the history of human kind has a nation risen to world prominence and shown as little interst in ‘Empire’ as the United States of America.
Ben:
You are correct if we are using only the most narrow definition of “empire.” Because an “empire” is not simply how much real estate a particular country controls, e.g., the Roman Empire. “Control” can be achieved in many different ways.
The U.S. “empire,” if such it is, is not one of real estate, but of economic, political and cultural “control” (or at very least, influence). And the U.S. has been, both consciously and not, attempting empire-building on a global scale – and in some areas, succeeding.
It is in THIS regard that the collapse of the dollar, the rejection of American politics (think Chavez and others), the rejection of American culture (think Islamic countries in particular), etc. are, in a real way, evidence of the collapse of an attempted “empire” – though some vestiges of that attempt (particularly economic) will probably last for quite some time.
Peace.
Posted on 28-Nov-07 at 2:41 pm | PermalinkIan, you are perhaps a little too close to the subject, in that it is not realy a rejection of American culture, but of Westernised culture that is going on with these people.
Posted on 29-Nov-07 at 2:00 am | PermalinkAlso, the dollar is not collapsing. In the fifties, Americas hay-day, it was £3’s to £1. It’s presently perceived ‘low’ value has many advantages as the business article I sent you yesterday points out, particularly in respect of Americas exports which are now taking off.
Surely, Americas main problem is a combination of being somewhat self-obsessive and of having a population almost equally divided between the radical and the fundementalists. I may be seeing things too simply, but it seems to me that these two camps have reached a point where they are no longer talking to each other, and in a Democracy, that’s bad.
Ben:
While you may be right that it is “Western” culture that is being rejected, who really represents “Western” culture most: America or Britain (or France, or Spain, or any other “Western” country)? While radical Islam certainly has its beef with Britain and other “Western” countries (as evidenced by the train bombings in London and Madrid), it is America that gets that most opprobrium, as the “great Satan,” not any other “Western” country.
Re the dollar, you could not be more wrong. It is down against almost every other currency. The housing market – one of the main supports of the USD economy – has tanked, and there seems no end to its downward spiral. Hedge funds – not just American, but European as well – are going bankrupt or out of business due to the “subprime scandal” and the falling US dollar. Foreign countries are investing in China, India and other places because they see the increasing risk of investing in the U.S. The oil-producing nations – Arab, African and South American – are looking to peg oil against something other than the dollar. And the Chinese and Arab banks not only have the largest amount of actual U.S. cash, but also hold the majority of our debt.
And this is just the SHORT list. By every possibly measure, the dollar is collapsing in every real sense.
As for the American schism, it is far more political now than religious. The “red state/blue state” mentality – a bogus one, based on an increasingly (and successfully) propagandistic Republican Party and a sadly spineless Democratic one – drives everything now, while the so-called Religious Right and conservative evangelicals are increasingly divided vis-a-vis the American body politic (which is a good thing).
America’s “problem” is that it has bought lock-stock-and-barrel into the phony “post-9/11 world” “war on terror” propaganda and mentality pushed by both parties. This is why an adulterous, immoral, lying bully like Giuliani (who is MUCH more dangerous than Bush) has become a Teflon candidate, and why Americans are so willing to have their freedoms and civil liberties eroded in the name of an illusory “security.”
Peace.
Posted on 29-Nov-07 at 2:07 pm | PermalinkI take on board all you say, Ian. But we shall see about the ‘collapsing’ dollar. I still view a cheap dollar as being a big plus for The States. The US economy will reorient itself and the biggest victims will be in Europe. That is a view being expressed on BBC World News as I type.
Posted on 30-Nov-07 at 10:44 am | Permalinka good reference for all this is Chalmers Johnson – he takes the position that the couple hundred or so military bases that the US has all over the globe basically constitute Empire, just in a more subtle way. Just like what Ecuador president Rafael Correa said in regards to renewing a US military base in his country … he said “We’ll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami — an Ecuadorean base”. Johnson is a former cold warrior who in retrospect sees the anti-communist hysteria (like today’s “Islamo-Fascist” hysteria) as a means to seize valuable assets (oil, minerals, etc).
Here’s an interview with him –
Chamlers Johnson interview
Personally I think that the “Empire” is composed more or less of a relatively small family of multi-national corporations that use the United States army as their global police force (someone has to provide the muscle, right?), with the World Bank, the WTO and the IMF providing the “non-lethal” pressure.
Posted on 04-Dec-07 at 3:12 pm | PermalinkMike:
The multinationals/U.S. police force concept is a really powerful one. I would add that, now that paramilitary groups like Blackwater et al are official “in bed” with the U.S. government, we will see them playing a larger role here, so that the U.S. military itself is “off the hook” in many cases in this regard.
Peace.
Posted on 04-Dec-07 at 11:07 pm | Permalinkright .. the whole democracy concept around Empire isn’t working anymore so the multinationals have to go with a private force – it’s a brave new world
Posted on 05-Dec-07 at 10:20 am | Permalink