Dubai Forums Dubai Discussions Dubai Politics Talk

I found this interesting. I wonder how many here would agree?

The new empire

Paul Craig Roberts
Thursday, March 29, 2012

Great empires, such as the Roman and British, 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 amongst 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 Timothy H Parsons 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.

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 ten years of trillion dollar struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Washington has almost nothing to show for it.

America’s wars are very expensive. Bush and Obama have doubled the national debt, and the American people have no benefits from it. No riches, no bread and circuses flow to the 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 US Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the Security State, and Americans’ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the one 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 government that Washington established. There is no victory in Afghanistan, and after a decade the American military does not control the country.

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 Homeland Security. The American empire works by stripping the Americans of wealth and liberty.

This is why the wars cannot end, or if one does end another starts. Remember when Obama came into office and was asked what the US 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 but renewed the Afghan war. Obama cannot tell the Americans that the purpose of the war is to build the power and profit of the military/security complex at the expense of the American citizens.

Large numbers of people have been bombed and killed 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. The American people too are victims of the American empire.

"The writer is a former editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury."

Courtesy: http://www.counterpunch.org

Interesting article, I agree with it 90%, but there is an element of wealth extraction. US of A has major control over world economy and attacking Iraq did help major corps. But situation is getting more complex with EU and China becoming major economic powers on par with US of A.

It will be interesting to see how the following will play out.

1. US debt is mounting so how far major US corps can influence US govt polices, and how long it can continue.

2. Growing power of EU and China in opposition to US would really matter? Because this is the era of globalization and major US corps are multinationals, they can still extract benefits of US opening up other countries for extration of resources.

3. Conservatives are getting more aggrassive in US politics. All of it is economic or is there ideological deminsion to it? Doesn't necessairly mean conservatives' policies are not disastrous; their policies can cause a collapse of US economy like the collapse of USSR.