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The accounting details of how precisely the plunder takes place are trivial and pointless for policy purposes, however interesting they are in the abstract.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
The US empire, like the Aztec, appears to be driven to constant war, even against already defeated foes. So not all states that are attacked actually did something to step out of line. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
Therefore, the imperial center has to throw a current, former or prospective vassal up against the wall every once in a while, pour encourager les autres.
And if, inconveniently, no current, former or future vassal is both (a) out of line, and (b) inside your sphere of influence when you need to have your regular fix of violence, then you just redraw either The Line or your sphere of influence such that someone is.
Others have a strong internal need for new wars. Be it new contracts for a MIC, new medals for the officers or fresh slaves.
This is not an either/or thing, more a scale. But contrast the US empire with the Soviet empire. Post-WWII what has Soviet got in way of throwing colonies against the wall? Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.
The US empires need for wars is not as extreme as the Spartans with their seasonal wars on their own slaves, but still on the same end of the scale. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
An orderly empire allows for well organised resource extraction [...] Others have a strong internal need for new wars [...] ... contrast the US empire with the Soviet empire...
Others have a strong internal need for new wars [...]
... contrast the US empire with the Soviet empire...
John Michael Greer has an almost thermodynamic view of an empire:
An empire is an arrangement among nations, backed and usually imposed by military force, that extracts wealth from a periphery of subject nations and concentrates it in the imperial core. Put more simply, an empire is a wealth pump, a device to enrich one nation at the expense of others. The mechanism of the pump varies from empire to empire and from age to age; the straightforward exaction of tribute that did the job for ancient Egypt, and had another vogue in the time of imperial Spain, has been replaced in most of the more recent empires by somewhat less blatant though equally effective systems of unbalanced exchange. While the mechanism varies, though, the underlying principle does not.
an empire is a wealth pump, an arrangement backed by military force that extracts wealth from a periphery of subject nations and concentrates it in the imperial core
The Soviet empire is quite an exeption though, despite Greer talking about "looting of eastern Europe for Russian benefit". Economically and materially, the Soviets were actually supporting the periphery (particularly Central Asia, vassals like Cuba, North Korea) with cheap oil, gas, fertilizers, while "looting" is not the right word for what they were imposing. Looking form this angle, the strange collapse of USSR is less mysterious.
I am so tired of this propaganda cliché... "Collapse" imply sudden, spontaneous, and more or less disorderly fall/ slump. In contrast the USSR, and most of the Eastern Block was dismantled voluntarily, peacefully, in a planned orderly fashion from the top down; and this is well documented. In fact, to the best of my knowledge it is the only socio-economic system in history that ceased to exist in such a manner.
Of course one might argue that the USSR lost the Cold War and the armaments race, and that was what tore the system down, but this will be digging more into the reasons of why the lights were turned off. By the end of the 1980s the USSR still had enough retaliatory military power to continue to dwindle for decades ahead.
Hm, in the case of the Soviet Union, a failed coup followed by independence declarations of the republics, ending with a semi-coup of the leaders of three republics against Gorbachev (the Belavezha Accords) is not exactly planned or orderly, even if the final act was another accord that also regulated legal inheritance. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
until they had dismantled enough of the state that opponents could challenge them
Gorbachev was very active in replacing top functionaries, also in the republics. Funny, but his policies exactly provoked national tensions that were dormant for decades. No one else but himself installed those few "problematic" city majors, region leaders - and then gave all initiative to them in the last year, while showing no adequate concern for the fate of the USSR. In the East Europe, stubbornness of DDR and Romania leaders bothered him more than Poland.
The August putsch was in 1991. The Soviets needed quick foreign currency only for Chernobyl.
No one else but himself installed those few "problematic" city majors, region leaders - and then gave all initiative to them in the last year, while showing no adequate concern for the fate of the USSR.
When energy prices crashed in the 1980s, as a consequence of the development of the North Sea oil and gas deposits, they became unable to finance the imports of higher quality Western consumer goods to which the population had become accustomed during the period of high energy prices in the '70s. It went predictably downhill from there.
Btw, as a matter of fact Chaushescu was not exactly "overthrown", but after a mock court murdered by his own security services live on TV; not as savage as the execution of Ghadaffi, but still pretty shocking back then to happen in an European country.
an empire is a wealth pump
To the elites it is the personal wealth accumulation that matters, not the fates of nation states. To that end they have systematically undermined the economic sovereignty of individual nations, starting at the core. No restrictions on our capital movement gentlemen, that will not be tolerated. That makes it easier for them to extract profits from shifting the manufacturing to China and other low wage locations while US citizens go into debt to finance consumption. The fact that the recycling mechanism has broken down indicates that either a new system will have to emerge and/or we will witness the collapse of the current system. But doing anything that interferes with the accumulation to prevent collapse, economic and/or environmental, is just not a serious proposal. "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
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