The title of “Empire” is not ascribed to the United States by observers but revealed by astute journalists as indeed what the powers that be in the US think of itself.

The recent P&I article by Noel Turnbull (02/06/2024) titled “We’re an empire now, and we create our own reality…” attest to the statement above. Since World War II, the US Empire has been supported and sustained by the transatlantic powers, mainly through NATO. For the last eight decades, this global empire reigned unopposed until the meteoric rise of China both economically, militarily and to some extent diplomatically through its influence in the Global South. One way to look at the present geopolitical tensions is to consider how the present world has been organised and to consider what alternative models there may be.

It is an existential reality that the victors in a war reorganise the world as they see fit. In the last one, it was the US-led Allies that won.

One could look at this reorganised world as a power structure consisting of a ruling hub made up mainly of Western nations with the United States at its core. Other nations around the world are organised in concentric circles around this core according to their level of relevance to the centre. The word “relevance” is a loaded term and is crucial to the relationship between the centre and its peripheral rings. It implies whether these countries comprise people of European origin, profess an adherence to the idea of democracy and common values with the core, is endowed with valuable natural resources and willing to make them available to the Empire and its supporters on terms agreeable to them, are economically strong and political supporters, or pose no challenge to the ruling hub either economically or militarily; or a combination of such factors. Nations that are renegades, recalcitrants or possess nothing of value to the core are relegated to the periphery. In this sense, the arrangement is not static but dynamic with nations moving closer or farther from the core according to whether they have won the core’s favour. Japan is an interesting case. At the end of WWII it was among the outermost rings but have moved to the centre to become a member of the empire’s elitist G7 group. It has done everything to the US’s bidding including the Plaza Accord which saw the value of the yen rise to a point that resulted in economic woes. In recent years, in the Asia Pacific geopolitics, it jumped in favour of the US even before the US asked it to do so. The LNP governments of Australia was a step behind in asking “How high?”

If a renegade state refuses to fall in line, then trade........

© Pearls and Irritations