Dismantling the Empire
Ending militarism and finding the funding for peace
The United States became the 68th empire in the history of the human species, replacing the British Empire which boasted that it was “The empire on which the sun never sets.” But, as history teaches us, all empires eventually fall, no matter how powerful.
By 1945, the US had surpassed other nations, both in military and economic power. While there may be an argument about whether or not the US fits the definition of empire, it certainly behaves like an imperialist nation.
Imperialism can be defined as a doctrine, political strategy, practice, state policy, or advocacy that consists in extending power by territorial acquisition or by extending political and economic control outward over other areas. Imperialism oftentimes involves the use of military and economic power, and always aims for more expansion and collective or individual domination.
Empires do not exist to serve the people, but rather to enrich the ruling class. Empires serve to weaken the working class, something that Chris Hedges explained in his article The Real Enemy is Within:
W.E.B. Du Bois warns that empire was the primary tool used to break the working class in Europe and later in the United States. As workers organized and fought for rights and fair wages, the masters of empire started to shift production to countries more easily controlled, countries inhabited by “darker peoples.” This is a shift that is largely complete.
“Here, are no labor unions or votes or questioning onlookers or inconvenient consciences,” Du Bois writes. “These men may be used down to the very bone, and shot and maimed in ‘punitive’ expeditions when they revolt. In these dark lands ‘industrial development’ may repeat in exaggerated form every horror of the industrial horror of Europe, from slavery and rape to disease and maiming, with one test of success—dividends.”
Du Bois also knew that the costs of maintaining empire were offset by the profits. “What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?” he asks.
The US empire is now collapsing. Trillions of dollars spent on military actions, and yet each operation to combat terrorism results in increased terrorism. Everywhere the US has intervened, with the supposed goal of fighting terrorism, has suffered chaos, poverty, destroyed infrastructure, and increased terrorism through counter-terrorism groups. (Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen). Because these military actions were never about helping people gain democracy, but about putting straw-men into place who will do the bidding of the US.
And while those trillions of dollars in military spending have served to destabilize many places around the world, the effects are felt at home, too. More money for the military means less money for education, anti-poverty programs, housing, social services, environmental projects, and infrastructure.
With bridges collapsing, homelessness rising, healthcare unattainable, and poverty increasing, the working class in the US finds itself living from paycheck to paycheck, with little or no hope for a better future.
Trillions of dollars spent on militarism have not kept us safe. The US is a nation that lives in fear — fear of immigrants, fear of crime, fear of poverty, fear of terrorism — because we are propagandized into believing that our country is some kind of shining beacon promoting goodness, and that any country that doesn’t bow down before us is our enemy.
Keeping working people fearful is the tactic the oligarchs use to control us. The oligarchs prosper from keeping the military-industrial complex humming along. They don’t gain wealth from public parks, maternity/paternity leave, decent public education, and anti-pollution efforts. They gain wealth from denying those things to the working class, in order to keep the working class desperate enough to remain in service to their masters.
The next time someone tells you that there is no way the government could find the funding necessary to fund the kind of social programs that would truly help the people, refer them to these facts:
A Better World is Possible (and Affordable)
A $100 billion annual cut to military spending could have gone towards:
10 times as many households receiving public housing (10.39 million), or
More than 1 in 3 children aged 0-5 going to Head Start (7.81 million), or
Nearly 1 in 3 veterans receiving medical care (5.88 million), or
More than 7 in 10 uninsured adults receiving health care (20.24 million), or
Solar power for every household in the U.S. (131.2 million), with billions of dollars to spare
Empires all eventually fall, and that fall is almost always precipitated by prioritizing military spending over social spending. The US empire collapse is already in progress. The poor have known this for quite a while.
Now, more and more of the middle class is being affected as mass lay-offs are occurring in fields that employ the college-educated: “More than 191,000 workers at U.S.-based tech companies were laid off in mass job cuts in 2023, according to our tally, and the cuts continue into 2024. Follow along here with our comprehensive tech layoffs tracker, updated weekly, of U.S. tech employers cutting jobs — whether that's at companies as large as Google and Microsoft, or smaller startups.”
Things are going to get tough for all of us, whether or not we are ready. Will you open your eyes to the possibility that a better world is possible? Will you educate yourself about how to make peace a priority?