Even after the imperialists overthrew the Soviet Union, Putin has made Russia into a rising power that sets itself up against U.S. interests. China has risen to a point where it can significantly challenge U.S. interests in Africa, South America, and elsewhere. Iranian influence has been increasing as U.S. Middle Eastern influence has been waning. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have created an explosion of jihadist extremism in the region, mirroring what's happened since the 2011 NATO invasion of Libya.
Aside from the ever-increasing sanctions on its rivals, military operations of various kinds have been Washington's response; the drone wars in the Middle East and Libya, the proxy wars with Russia in Ukraine and Syria, the continued military operations in Iraq that have involved attacks on Iran, the anti-Russian war games, and the military buildup in the areas surrounding China, are all part of America's micro-militarist phase.
As always happens when empires descend into micro-militarism, these aggressive moves are ultimately speeding up the imperial decline. The sanctions on Russia have strengthened Russia's alliance with China and weakened the U.S. dollar by creating a sanctioning of dollar transactions. The assassination of Soleimani has provoked international backlash against the U.S. and further strengthened Iraq's ties with Iran. America's global military presence has stretched the empire's resources thin, making it unable to invade Venezuela or Iran. In these ways, the endless wars are backfiring. Yet Washington can't stop them; they're crucial for keeping much of America's remaining influence, they serve a role in the cold war against Russia and China, and their long-term continuation is beneficial for corporate America.
The Pentagon stated something to this effect in one 2018 report, which concluded that if the U.S. wants to maintain military buildup against Russia and China, its corporations will have to create "support for a vibrant domestic manufacturing sector, a solid defense industrial base, and resilient supply chains". This reflects the observations from columnist Louis Uchitelle, who wrote in the New York Times in 2017 about how integral the war economy has become to American corporate profits: "The U.S. still leans on the military-industrial complex... Modern factories, even when they materialize, are highly automated, which helps to explain why the manufacturing work force has bumped along at less than 13 million for nearly a decade, according to the Labor Department, although factory output--including weapons production--keeps rising smartly."
This means that military contractors and Silicon Valley have become dependent on the perpetuation of war--both in terms of the military wars and in terms of the cold war with Russia and China--for a continued profit boom. While military contractors like Raytheon sell weapons, tech companies like Amazon sell technologies to the military. As indicated by the 2018 Pentagon document's emphasis on the importance of building up the high-tech sector, the Silicon Valley companies especially stand to gain from a continuation of war.
This is because they're being relied upon to bring about what Washington think tanks call the "fourth industrial revolution", where U.S. artificial intelligence, automation, and quantum-computing technologies outcompete China in these areas (or at least this is what the cold warriors hope will happen). Washington's pursuit of artificial-intelligence technologies as they relate to managing nuclear weapons also present a business opportunity for big tech, since a nuclear-arms race with Russia and China is getting in motion.
Micro-militarism and the onset of the 21st century's great-power competition have produced a myriad of conflicts that Washington is unwilling to back out of. The ones who benefit are the plutocrats who can profit from the many facets of these conflicts. War is how American capitalism has come to be held together. So for as long as America exists, it will keep being at war.
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