Historically, aggressive wars to achieve or expand Economic Empire were driven by the will to power of militaristic elite, and could be easily impressed on a non-elite population through either the promise of ‘war booty’, conscription, or the fear of summary execution by the ruling-elite. This early ‘carrot’ and ‘stick’ approach to imperial war campaigns was very effective down through the ages, and continued to be effective (with minor allusions to patriotism and ‘national destiny’) right up through WWII. After all, it must be remembered that well delivered speeches, albeit from a master orator, were more than sufficient to enlist the modern and sophisticated populations of Germany with promises and justifiable ‘rights’ of needed Lebensraum ("living space") and ethnic pride.
During the claimed ‘post-imperial’ era beyond WWII, and with the economic collapse of the British Empire and most others, the two remaining empires (one an acknowledged empire and one not) briefly jousted in a so-called cold-war, which seemed to neither’s economic advantage. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the ascendance of a singular empire which prefers to be termed a ‘liberal capitalist democracy’, wars of aggression have had to be disguising as moral necessities. After all, fighting a war against another empire to achieve economic hegemony can always be prettified in ideological terms, but a unitive super-power empire should not be seen in our politically correct times as merely perpetrating ‘smash and grab’ heists on other sovereign states. Thus America, or more accurately the global corporate Empire disguising itself behind the façade of “Vichy America”, has had to utilize the political and military power of this former nation-state to appear to be acting in “humanitarian interests” when it launches preemptive, and economic wars of empire.
The need for increasing niceties and guile in launching modern wars of aggression to support the economics of empire is not the only consideration for the world’s remaining empire. All empires, once they become dependent on the resources of other societies for their own economic growth, face the need to grow and bring in even more resources and wealth in order to support their own ever expanding elite hierarchy. In this sense, all empires are very much akin to the false economy of a Ponzi scheme --- which requires more and more input to provide profitable returns to the earlier and favored investors.
The old adage that “it required half the globe to support the British Empire” is more than doubly true for today’s global corporate/financial Empire which operates under the guise of “Vichy America”. However, the greatest amount of economic wealth gleaned from the globe is, through the modern alchemy of hedge and private equity funds monetized not out of lead, but out of pure air, by stripping and scooping up real assets and replacing them with fiat currency. This sweeping up of the globe’s real asset wealth is highly efficient with modern imperial finance capitalism, in which the global Empire is ‘the house’ and controls the only rules of globalization, namely rules that favor investors.
By the most recognized measure of wealth inequality (GINI Index .85), the richest 1 percent of people in the world control as much wealth as the bottom 57 percent. While the true ruling-elite, who are actively engaged in the global corporate Empire are considerably less than .01%, all of the upper tiers of the wealth pyramid, even as low as 20%, must be satisfied with some pay out ---- and this naturally differs considerably by antiquated nation-state identities, with the US coming first, and demanding the most resources and energy for its pyramid.
The GINI Index, whether applied to inequality of wealth or income, is 0 if distribution is perfectly equitable and 1.0 if one person has all the wealth or income. For example the GINI income index is .45 for the US, while it is a far more equitable (.25 to .35) for all other modern industrialized countries. This represents a problem for the global corporate Empire centered in “Vichy America” because their own CIA cautions that any country with a GINI Index about .40, and particularly climbing like the US, is in danger of “social unrest”.
The scope of imperial arguments as to why a significant degree of inequality is essential is beyond hypocrisy --- ranging from the absurdly fallacious and historical favorite, “because God deemed it that way”, to the appearance of modern technical economic propaganda, “because the level of investment to insure capitalistic growth requires a level of savings and accumulation that can only be assured with high levels of inequality.” However, all of these justifications, from the stupid to the sophisticated, as to why inequality must remain high are beginning to be viewed very suspiciously and angrily by the local US ‘working class’ population, and as the CIA advise about our high domestic GINI Index and John Edwards warns, “there are increasingly two different and unfair Americas”. Thus the global corporate Empire hiding behind their façade of a “Vichy America” is becoming increasingly concerned that they need to keep consumer satisfaction and life style up or they risk going down, themselves in angry revolt. The global Empire can not look to exploit the American citizenry much more ---- particularly since American citizens (whether they know it or not) are the only people in the world who’s slim remaining voting rights could actually bring down the global Empire.
For a single global corporate/financial Empire the issues of increasing exploitation of real resource and asset wealth on a global basis presents an increasingly dangerous balancing game of exploiting traditional ‘nation states’ both near and far from the Empire’s nominal home base ---- made even more precarious by the ever growing needs for wealth input to the Empire’s Ponzi pyramid. Like all traditional financial Ponzi schemes, this ever growing need for greater incoming funds becomes a nervous balancing act that as it grows monstrously must eventually collapse. Of course any pathology of unnatural growth, whether biological, like metastasizing cancer, or of a global financial Empire, which exhausts its host environment, is ultimately unsustainable and must collapse.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
