American Empire

The American Empire refers to the United States and the various parts of the world where it exercises massive influence and control.

America itself, as it is commonly understood, is really a giant settler colony, a huge territory of stolen/extorted land where the native people still face repression and a lack of rights and resources. Several million people live in American colonies in the Pacific and the Caribbean, who are excluded from much of the American political process and live in some of the worst conditions in the country. America has a network of hundreds of military bases that extend all over the world into dozens of countries, including in US-backed dictatorships where the general population does not want American bases, and even in "democracies" where many people do not want American bases. American corporations are some of the most influential globally, stretching all over the world in a network unlike any other, extracting resources and controlling workers in exploitative and destructive ways. American culture also holds a certain amount of dominance and gives America a special status in the world.

A better understanding of our global system may be that the empire is not so much American as centered in America. The world is now incredibly globalized, with multinational corporations and international trade driving nearly all economies, with global information networks, with a single language (English) being dominant in business and science, with international organizations like the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the WHO, and others. Even individuals, many of which are not extremely wealthy, can travel around the world and see multiple countries. The "Empire" in this understanding of the world is the group of people who by force have placed themselves at the top of this global system and are able to benefit from it at the expense of most of the rest of the world. What is clear is that in the past several decades, the United States has led most of the violence to create this world and has placed its state as the managerial state for the globe. True, many who were not coerced by America joined this modern global capitalism willingly, but they all consented to American leadership. Only countries that are outside this system are really free from American dominance.

We should also consider that the modern state of the world is not really a different empire than the European empires that dominated the last several centuries, but an empire which reorganized those same structures of domination, exploitation, and extraction for its own benefit without having to reconquer them. The wealth that accumulated in North America and Europe allows them to bribe, and fund the weapons to threaten other countries, while colonization created an elite of white settler colonists or people willing to sell their own people out to colonizers in the now independent former colonies, an elite that is not easily disempowered. Debts placed on former colonies are still respected, and this has often meant that these former colonies are forced to continually pay off their loan for generations or reorganize their economy (in the interests of rich countries) in exchange for Structural Adjustment Program loans to remove their debt(more on this below). Local cultures and languages have been destroyed, making local organization of any economic or political kind against the imperial core more difficult. Many citizens of the former colonies were educated in the imperial core or took on the culture of the colonizer, and are thus more amenable to imperial interests than local ones.

America conquered the world and maintains its position, with the help of other wealthy states, by the following means:

1. Basic Economic Influence
	* America has the largest economy in the world, and in our globalized economy, countries are dependent on their largest trading partners. New York and other American cities are centers of global trade and finance. Most countries in the world, especially small and poor ones, are dependent on the American economy and must do what American companies want to get investment, must do what the American government wants to avoid embargo, and must follow American norms and rules in order to do business. America's strong and diverse internal economy means it will not face the same pressures. (While China is also a large economy, its economy is more reliant on imports and exports, so it is vulnerable to those forces. It is also smaller than America in total, and is economically small compared to America and its other rich allies which have less people).
	* America and other wealthy countries also hold large amounts of debt of poor countries. The American government is in a lot of debt, but that debt is mostly to American citizens, while allies that America militarily occupies like Japan hold most of the rest of the debt. Private banks hold a lot of third world debt, and the massive debt of third world countries in general makes them vulnerable.
	* The exploitative history of America and Europe means they hold much of the patents and intellectual property of the world, allowing them to continually hoard innovation, collect a tax on anyone who wants to use this intellectual property, or limit development of other countries.
	* The top schools of the United States and Europe are products of the colonial era, and thus the rest of the world has to send their people to these countries to get the top educations in the world. This makes them dependent on America and other rich countries, not to mention the effects of having their most highly educated citizens being influenced by western values in their education.
2. Basic Military Influence
	* America has a network of military bases around the world, much like the Roman system of garrisons. They keep the peace(a certain type of peace), allow America to intervene in conflicts globally, and threaten everyone implicitly. There are no countries that even compare in their foreign bases, in fact most foreign military bases are American, while most of the rest are its close allies Britain and France.
	* American controls the seas militarily, with the most powerful Navy in the world by far, and as many aircraft carriers as the rest of the world combined, it can project power on everyone. An aircraft carrier is almost an act of imperialism in itself, a small city able to be sent around the world. Along with the military bases, America's global sea control allows it to control trade routes and protect trade it prioritizes while blockading states it is opposed to and seizing their resources.
	* America controls the skies as well. The simple ability of an American president to drone strike a target on the other side of the world is a power that is beyond that of any ancient emperor over any part of his empire.
	* America gives military aid to dozens of nations, especially Israel, Egypt, and Iraq. Any country which has its military funded by another will be forced to militarily prioritize the funders interests. America is bankrolling wars like Israel's war on Palestine or Morocco's war on Western Sahara through its funding. America also has a history of funding non-governmental militant groups. As America is also a center of weapons companies (its European allies and its closer ally Israel are also significant in this field), who America chooses to sell to, and what kinds of weapons it sells, clearly affect the global balance of power and influence conflicts across the world. This allows America to use other wars for its own imperial interests, sacrificing only money and the lives of foreigners.
	* America is the only country in the world to have nuked another country, and the first one to acquire nuclear weapons. This basic threat, no matter how unlikely they are to use it, makes non-nuclear countries subordinate to those with nukes, and influences all negotiations and agreements in the interests of nuclear powers. As American allies dominate the countries with nuclear weapons, and America has one of the largest arsenals that is most spread out throughout the world, it is clearly the dominant nuclear power.
3. International Organizations
	* The United Nations is the most powerful international organization in the world. It is headquartered in the United States, in New York City, while its major departments are all located in Western Europe and North America. America is also one of only five countries with the special status of being a permanent member of the Security Council, and leads the most powerful faction within the council as smaller western European allies make up two of the other four.
	* The IMF and the World Bank are some of the most important international financial institutions in the world, and America holds the largest stake in these organizations and thus has the most voting power, as well as the unique ability to veto proposed redistribution of ownership in these organizations, guaranteeing the dominance of America and its allies.
		+ The debt and underdevelopment of poor nations has forced them to accept Structural Development Programs that are not clearly beneficial, but do require increased privatization, liberalizing trade and foreign investment, and cuts in government spending.
	* The International Criminal Court has been explicitly threatened by the United States Government in the Hague Invasion Act, helping keep American criminals unaccountable to international law by force.
4. CIA
	* The CIA's most important role in the world is its ability so replace noncompliant governments with governments that will do what America wants by organizing or supporting coups. This is essentially colonialism at its most basic form, taking over a country and placing it in the hands of loyal local rulers that know they can be removed, though it is much more subtle. The CIA has done this dozens of times, on every continent, and repeatedly for some countries. Replacing democratically elected President Salvadore Allende with military dictator General Augusto Pinochet in the government of Chile is one of the most famous cases. Other countries that have faced coups with US intelligence backing include Guatemala, Iran, South Vietnam, Brazil, Indonesia, Iraq, Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Bolivia.
		+ Adjacent operations that may not be considered coups exactly, but achieve similar goals, include the financial and other support of protest movements against states that are enemies of the United States, including Cuba, Poland(under communism), China, and Venezuela. Intelligence operations have also included other sabotage, assassinations, and kidnapping that aims to pressure states whether or not it leads to regime change.
	* The CIA has funded people as influential and powerful as the Dalai Lama and Manuel Noriega. With some of the most powerful people in the world being their operatives, including heads of state, their influence is unparalleled. The CIA secretly owns front companies around the world, while hiring large numbers of informants.
	* The CIA and other intelligence agencies spy on world leaders like Angela Merkel.
	* Black Sites
5. Defense Department
	* Invasions
6. Corporations
	* Private Loans
7. Aid
	* NGOs
	* USAID
8. Colonies
	* Puerto Rico
	* Other
9. Media
	* Hollywood
	* Government Propaganda