10 
7 
5 View Ratings | Rate It
View Article Stats (12 comments)
Empires Then and Now
Become a Fan (253 fans) -- Page 1 of 1 page(s)
This article cross-posted from Paul Craig Roberts IPE
Great empires, such as the Roman and British, were extractive. The empires 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 (2010), Timothy H. Parsons replaces the myth of the civilizing empire with the truth of the extractive empire. He 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. To lower the cost of governing Kenya, the British instigated tribal consciousness and invented tribal customs that worked to British advantage.
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 nothing to show for it except possibly some part of the drug trade that can be used to fund covert CIA operations.
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 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 military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power. The US Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the Security State, and Americans' incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 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 puppet 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 Americans of wealth and liberty.
This is why the wars cannot end, or if one does end another starts. Remembewhen 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. He renewed the Afghan war without telling us its purpose. Obama cannot tell Americans that the purpose of the war is to build the power and profit of the military/security complex at the expense of American citizens.
This truth doesn't mean that the objects of American military aggression have escaped without cost. Large numbers of Muslims have been bombed and murdered 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. Just like the bombed and murdered Muslims, the American people are victims of the American empire.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQBWGo7pef8
Replies
Obama to World: Bad News. The American Empire Is Dead.
U.S. President Barack Obama presented world leaders at the United Nations with an image of America as a reluctant superpower, ready to confront Iran's nukes and kill its enemies with targeted drone strikes, but unprepared to embark on open-ended military missions in Syria and other troubled countries. That, he hinted, should give the world cause for anxiety.
"The United States has a hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries," he said in his address before the 193-member General Assembly. "The notion of American empire may be useful propaganda, but it isn't borne out by America's current policy or public opinion."
Obama said that "the recent debate within the United States over Syria clearly showed the danger for the world is not an America that is eager to immerse itself in the affairs of other countries or take on every problem in the region as its own. The danger for the world is that the United States, after a decade of war -- rightly concerned about issues back home, aware of the hostility that our engagement in the region has engendered throughout the Muslim world -- may disengage, creating a vacuum of leadership that no other nation is ready to fill."
Obama said that for the time being, American foreign-policy priorities in the Middle East will focus primarily on two key priorities: "Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and the Arab-Israeli conflict. While these issues are not the cause of all the region's problems, they have been a major source of instability for far too long, and resolving them can help serve as a foundation for a broader peace."
In addressing the conflict in Syria, Obama said U.S. aims were largely humanitarian.
"There's no 'great game' to be won, nor does America have any interest in Syria beyond the well-being of its people, the stability of its neighbors, the elimination of chemical weapons, and ensuring it does not become a safe haven for terrorists," he said.
Obama affirmed his commitment to the U.S.-Russian plan to place the Assad regime's chemical weapons under international control, acknowledging that the Syrian president had taken a positive initial step by declaring his stockpiles.
"My preference has always been a diplomatic resolution to this issue," he said, stressing the importance of a Security Council resolution that will hold Assad to his commitments. "There must be consequences if they fail to do so," he said. "If we cannot agree even on this, then it will show that the U.N. is incapable of enforcing the most basic of international laws."
The president presented the U.S.-Russian plan as a catalyst for a broader international effort to bring the conflict to an end, but emphasized that America should not determine who will eventually lead in Syria. In keeping with his characteristically small-bore approach, he announced an additional $340 million in U.S. humanitarian assistance but shied away from any mention of toppling Bashar al-Assad.
The United States and Russia remain sharply divided over how to implement their chemical weapons agreement; the U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing the pact has been delayed several times. The United States insists that Syria face the threat of unspecified "consequences" if it fails to comply with its obligation to disarm, while Russia prefers a more consensual approach that includes no explicit or implicit threat of force.
Speaking before Obama, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the U.N. Security Council to hold the Syrian government to "fully and quickly honor[ing]" the obligations it has undertaken to destroy its chemical weapons, and he pleaded with the Security Council to move forward with an "enforceable" resolution ensuring that Syria complies.
But Ban added that removing unconventional arms can't be the international community's only goal in Syria. "We can hardly be satisfied with destroying chemical weapons while the wider war is still destroying Syria. The vast majority of the killing and atrocities have been carried out with conventional weapons," he said.
Ban urged Syria's combatants and their foreign backers to "stop fueling the bloodshed in Syria" and halt all arms shipments to the fighters. "Military victory is an illusion," he said. "The only answer is a political settlement." Ban also raised the possibility of sending U.N. human rights monitors to Syria, where they "could play a useful role in reporting and deterring further violations."
Obama, meanwhile, laid out a rather modest account of American "core interests" in the Middle East and North Africa: countering military aggression against U.S. partners in the region, protecting global energy reserves, and confronting the dual threats of terrorism and nuclear proliferation.
"The United States of America is prepared to use all elements of our power, including military force, to secure these core interests in the region," he said. "But I also believe that we can rarely achieve these objectives through unilateral American action -- particularly with military action. Iraq shows us that democracy cannot be imposed by force. Rather, these objectives are best achieved when we partner with the international community and with the countries and people of the region."
Accordingly, he defended the U.S. decision to work with Egypt's new military regime, which came to power through a July 3 military coup and launched a bloody crackdown on its political opposition. "Our approach to Egypt reflects a larger point: The United States will at times work with governments that do not meet the highest international expectations, but who work with us on our core interests," Obama said.
Obama added that he is willing to work even with America's traditional rivals, singling out Iran, to achieve his goals. Speaking several hours before Iranian President Hasan Rouhani was due to address the U.N. General Assembly, Obama offered assurances that "we are not seeking regime change, and we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy. Instead, we insist that the Iranian government meet its responsibilities under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and U.N. Security Council resolutions."
"We should be able to achieve a resolution that respects the rights of the Iranian people, while giving the world confidence that the Iranian program is peaceful. To succeed, conciliatory words will have to be matched by actions that are transparent and verifiable."
Earlier in the day, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff took to the U.N. podium to blast the massive electronic spying program that Obama has overseen in office. The surveillance, she claimed, constitutes a breach of international law and an affront to America's allies. Obama sought to assure leaders like her that he is listening. "We have begun to review the way that we gather intelligence, so as to properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share," Obama said. But he went on to defend the controversial eavesdropping effort, saying it was a just approach to combating terrorism by a superpower that is "shifting away from a perpetual war-footing."
Follow us on Twitter: @columlynch and @TyMcCormick
Reference: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/24/obama_to_world_b...