The US and its NATO allies (or underlings) have had quite a lot of military successes lately. They have helped Israel defeat HAMAS, reconquer the Gaza strip (killing in the process 70,000-100,000 civilians), seriously weaken Hezbollah in Lebanon and occupy the south of Syria. They have together with Israel severely weakened Iran through a targeted killing campaign, eliminating a series of high-ranking Iranian officers, and with a 12-day bombing campaign reduced several Iranian military installations to rubble. They have toppled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and installed a pro-Turkish islamist former Al Qaeda leader (Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, alias Abu Mohammad al-Julani) as acting president in Syria (and by the way leaving the country in chaos and misery). They have kidnapped the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and successfully blocked and taken over Venezuela’s oil export. Now the US (to the surprise of its NATO vassals) is preparing to occupy Greenland, and by the way bomb Iran and several Latin American countries. Maybe invade some of them too, depending on his mood. Nothing of this is of course legal according to international law, but, as Secretary of the State Madeleine Albright said to UK foreign minister Robin Cook in 1999, when he questioned the legality of the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia: “get new lawyers”. That is what the US and NATO have being doing since. Getting new lawyers. And that works marvellously.
It seems thus that the US is really on a roll.
US and Turkey have brought a pro-Turkish islamist former Al-Qaeda leader (Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, alias Abu Mohammad al-Julani) to power in Syria. The US has now unceremoniously dropped its former ally, the Kurdish SDF, and seamlessly switched support to al-Julani. Without support from the US, the SDF has been swept out of the areas it controlled. On the photo: al-Julani’s troops in Tabqa after conquering it. Photo from BBC-Reuters.
These military successes have stunned political leaders around the world. It reminds of the words of the Danish Foreign Minister Erik Scavenius in July 1940, when he said (with approval from the Prime Minister, Thorvald Stauning and the country already under German occupation): "By the great German victories, which have struck the world with astonishment and admiration, a new era has dawned in Europe, which will bring about a new order in political and economic terms under German leadership. It will be Denmark's task here to find its place in a necessary and mutually active cooperation with Greater Germany...”. The reaction of many political leaders around the world has been the same as Denmark’s in 1940: astonishment, admiration, fear, and finally submission to the reinvigorated US world leadership. The EU leaders have been swinging between euphoric admiration of the US’ determination and victories and a depressive mood as they have felt the pain of being on the receiving end of the US fury. They feel betrayed. The imperial punishing whip was supposed to be used only against Russia, China and ill-behaving developing countries, not against US’ own vassals in Europe. First a tariff war against the EU and now Greenland, that is not just! What they basically are saying to the US is that “feel free to grab Venezuela and Iran and their resources, but you can’t take Greenland”. Now President Trump has stated that he will slash extra tariffs on the EU until they deliver Greenland to him. The EU leaders are alarmed, bewildered and are running around as headless chickens. “We are good allies, it is not like this you talk to close allies”, to quote the almost crying Danish Foreign Minister. As if tears have any effect of Donald Trump. He only respects countries that stand up to him. Some bigger countries (apart from Russia and China) do that, among these India, Brazil, South Africa,Venezuela and Colombia. Up to now. We will see whether it lasts.
Demonstrations against Trump’s claim to Greenland in Nuuk and Copenhagen, Photos from social media.
Does all this then imply a reset of the world power relations in favour of the US? A new dawn for the US empire?
I don’t think so. I am of the old-fashioned school that is convinced that military power without economic power can only be transitory. There is no reason to doubt that the US empire has an impressive military power, which has a global reach through its extensive network of military bases (it controls around 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide) and its Naval forces, which dominate the world’s oceans. However, at a closer look, they don’t have sufficient economic power to back this military power up. In my interpretation, it is US compensating for its economic limitations with military overreach. That can work for some time. But it is likely to end badly for it.
A friend sent me a link to an analysis by a Brazilian former IMF official (Paolo Nogueira Batista) saying that the US is a particular case as it is an imperial power and the world’s biggest debtor, and that history shows that you can’t be both at the same time. I think that this statement is basically correct, but it needs a qualification. Empires have historically based themselves on tributes paid by occupied territories/countries. Think the Roman empire and its vast subdued territories, Spain and its Latin American colonies or United Kingdom and its colonies, not least India. Analysing what Donald Trump says, he seems to have come to the same conclusion, and he therefore wants his vassals and quasi-colonies to pay up. This is his justification for the tariff war and for his claim to take over Venezuela and Iran. An empire has to be profitable. The cost of keeping it going cannot be financed by debts. As a good capitalist (and imperialist), he wants revenues to be bigger than costs. Grabbing other countries’ resources is a way to increase the revenues.
However, he seems to have forgotten that imperial wars are costly undertakings. With wars, the cost of maitaining the empires goes up too, as the US imperial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan showed. The plundering of subdued countries may not be enough to avoid that the whole imperial business ends up with a deficit, which means more debts. And for sure, a lot of enemies, old and new. Sounds as bad business to me. Trump is ruthless, but is he really a successful businessman? He is accustomed to shady deals and declaring cessation of payments when his businesses get into troubles. And he is good at monetising his presidency. But monetising an empire is more complicated.
U.S. President James Monroe declared in 1823 that European nations should not interfere in the Western Hemisphere. President Theodore Roosevelt added in 1904 that the US had the right to intervene in any country in the Americas “to maintain order” (“walk softly and carry a big stick”), and now we have the ”Trump Corollary” adding that “the Western Hemisphere must be controlled by the US politically, economically, commercially, and militarily”. Cartoon from Wikipedia.
There are clear signs of imperial decay. Trump has declared that the US is the Master of the Western Hemisphere (“Monroe Doctrine 2.0”). He speaks furiously about how China has become the main trading partner for South America, and wants to push China out of the continent. Latin America shall trade with the US only, not China, he says. This was exactly what the colonial empires required. The English colonies in North America were forbidden to trade with anyone else than the English “Motherland” (which led to the Boston Tea Party rebellion and ultimately independence). The Spanish colonies in Latin America were only allowed to trade with the Spanish “Motherland”, the Danish Kingdom forbid their colony in Faroe Islands to trade with any other than the Danish “Motherland”, and so on. When an empire needs to force its underlings to trade only with itself, even when their products can’t compete, it is in trouble. There is no chance that the US can substitute China in Latin America. It cannot deliver what the Chinese are delivering: affordable industrial goods and investments in factories and infrastructure.
Colonial powers used to force their colonies to trade with the “Motherland” only. So did Denmark in Faroe Islands. In Thórshavn’s harbour there is a sculpture dedicated to the national hero, seaman, farmer, and poet “Nólsoyar Páll”, who in 1804 together with friends constructed the first Faroish ocean-going ship (deksbát) since the Viking era, Royndin Fríða, trying to break the Danish trade monopoly. That ended him in jail. But the colonial monopoly was eventually eliminated in 1856. Wikimedia.
I am convinced that there is a simple rule of thumb for empires. When the cost of maintaining an empire is higher than the revenues it produces, it is the end of it. Not immediately. It may take some time, as nationalist fervour in the “Motherland” can convince the population to pay for the deficit of the empire (you can still see this in England), but eventually, it will collapse under the economic burden. Unfortunately, it can do a lot of damage in the process. In a nuclear world, in the worst case it can take humanity down with it.
