The reality of empire

Benjamin Wise

In the world we now live in, it often seems that each new day brings a new crisis or catastrophe. It can be difficult to sort out everything that is happening in this country, let alone the world.

Today we face a world in which three wars (the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the new Israel/Lebanon war) spark fierce debate here in the U.S. and inflame hatred of America throughout the Middle East.

But while it is easy to see the current state of affairs as just a jumbled mess, with no clear cause or unifying theme, I would argue it is not.

There is a much more clear and cohesive way to view recent events and our role in them. And that is: the U.S. is home to a global empire.

That’s a large assertion, and of course, I’m just a humble Kossian - so I wouldn’t expect you to take my word for it. But you can take John Perkins’ word for it. He is the author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, an incredible book that helped me understand the truth of the world order in which we live.

Perkins worked for a company called MAIN during the 1970s, and his job was to create economic forecasts that would justify huge investment and development projects in “underdeveloped” countries. He eventually became the Chief Economist at MAIN and traveled to almost every continent, in the process meeting political leaders such as Panamanian President Omar Torrijos, and also contributing to some of the most influential international economic deals of the century.

With this experience, Perkins is in a better position than I to assess the structure of world affairs, and he does so as follows:

That is what we EHMs do best: we build a global empire. We are an elite group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure - electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or San Francisco.

Perkins outlines the structure of the global empire, what he likes to call the corporatocracy. It has three pillars: corporations, governments, and international banks. These three work together to ensure that their hold on power (and wealth) remains invulnerable.

Now, let me say, this is NOT a “blame-America” diary (as if such a thing existed). What I believe is that this global empire is not an American empire but a corporate empire. However, the corporatocracy is undeniably based in the U.S., like it or not.

And that is where we come in.

As Americans, as voters, and as patriotic, informed citizens (not only of our beloved country, but of the world), we must confront the reality of this de-facto empire and its consequences for us.

For starters, look around you. The most obvious example of the corporatocracy in action is the Iraq War. Sane Americans constantly ask ourselves, “Why did these idiots invade Iraq when the real threat is Osama bin Laden, and he’s still hiding in some cave in Pakistan?”

The answer is that they are not actually “idiots,” they just have different priorities - the priorities of the corporatocracy. Their empire depends on resources, including oil, of which Iraq has more than almost any other country. John Perkins describes how he himself helped work out a deal with Saudi Arabia, another big oil producer, to ensure that their oil would be continuously supplied to the global empire. But Saddam was crazy; he couldn’t be bought out or persuaded. So other means were necessary.

In describing the first Iraq conflict, Perkins writes:

Iraq was extremely important to us, much more important than was obvious on the surface. Contrary to common public opinion, Iraq is not simply about oil. It is also about water and geopolitics. Both the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers flow through Iraq; thus of all the countries in that part of the world, Iraq controls the most important sources of increasingly critical water resources.

…

However, by the late 1980s it was apparent that Saddam was not buying into the EHM scenario. This was a major frustration and a great embarassment to the first Bush administration… It was no surprise when the president finally ordered an all-out military attack. Five hundred thousand U.S. troops were sent in as part of an international force.

I don’t believe much has changed this time around. We all know about the disgraceful, no-bid contracts given to companies such as Halliburton in the aftermath of the invasion. I think that although the current war in Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster in military and diplomatic terms, it has been a huge success for members of the corporatocracy.

Unfortunately, while they figure out how to spend their added riches, the consequences of the Iraq War are much more problematic for the rest of us. Hatred of America is growing across the Middle East. Evil people like bin Laden use our occupation of Iraq and discontent stemming from the global, corporate empire to recruit an ever larger network of terrorists, which, as we all know can have terrible consequences for us here at home.

I just read a Vanity Fair article on the 9/11 attacks. For me, reading the minute-by-minute account of that day, as described in the article, was chilling, and reminds me once again how urgently we must act to prevent anything like that from ever happening again.

Fortunately, we in this community can make a difference.

The victory last week by Ned Lamont over Joe Lieberman gives us hope that Americans will reject the false justifications thrown down by the corporatocracy and finally stand up for a foreign policy that benefits US, the citizens of this great country, rather than international corporations who are not even people, much less citizens.

The covert global empire has and will continue to play a major role in our politics. We must continue to push for politicians who represent the people, not the powers-that-be.

In the meantime, I think the more awareness we can generate about this global empire and how it operates, the more likely we will be to successfully wrest back control of our country from it.