This sort of empire, if so you can properly term it, has little to do with military domination despite the focus on that provided by recent events in Iraq. I offer for evidence the fact that in a country of over a quarter billion people and a world of over seven billion, we have 1.4 million people in active armed service and the number has been decreasing for half a century. This number clearly does not serve to explain predominance inasmuch as it puts us pretty much in the middle of the pack at best.
Certainly technology is a force multiplier, and the U.S.'s is, at the moment, superior, but not enough superior to explain the predominance of power by itself. It is, moreover, very much a follow-on to civilian technology and not the reverse, which is the typical historical pattern.
What I'm considering right now to explain this anomalous geopolitical position is an oddly disproportionate economic strength and cultural permeation. What may be unique is that, contrary to most classical economic models, the former is not so much the power of the collective and central planning as it is the sum of innumerable small-scale activities accumulating into a rather amorphous whole. Von Mises may have been right. Something like that may be happening culturally, too, or perhaps that is simply a function of the means of cultural permeation the explosion in communications methods afforded it, both from economy and technology. Maybe both.
If so, we are wrong to focus on the military as a proper measure of this sort of "empire," in fact, if military means equates to empire then perhaps the latter term is inappropriate. "Hegemony" seems to be coming back into vogue, but that is a descriptive, not an explanatory, term. We're going to have to think outside the historical box here, because in 1991 the sides of that box got kicked away and the world we ended up looking at is both unexpected and unprecedented.
In short, I don't know what's going on either. Comments?
Ha!!! I nor anyone else can prove anything and we never will as we will never have all the evidence BUT as we watch events unfold we can note the clues and produce theories based on accumulated facts.
something much stranger than a conventional empire
Exactly. We influence without always being a force directly on the scene - rule by proxy or satrap as the case may be. If one satrap gets uppity - take him out. The key to all this is our wealth, global reach militarily and high tech capabilities.
Let's face it we, The US spend more on defense than everyone else combined and no one can hope to match it and the same goes for the high tech, it is beyond anyone else's capabilities. France and Germany want the EU to rise to prominence but they can't even afford their domestic socialist obligations so they can't compete militarily. China may be up and coming but they are far down the ladder from us and we are boxing them in with our forces. But the big prize in this whole adventure of ours and the key to everything is the strategic location of Iraq and the strategic natural resources - oil. Iraq is dead center in the middle of the Arab world and the first step. With a huge military force in place there we can dominate the entire region like never before. Right now it takes 6 months or better to build up a large invasion force. Once we have Iraq the problem is solved. With Afghanistan under our control and forces in the Stans of the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe opening up to our bases on top of Iraq and the Balkans we will control cental Asia - the world's oil supply (the balkans being the place for a pipeline to facilitate the supply out of the Black Sea bottleneck). Add to this mix the possibility of taking out the leadership of Syria, Lebanon, Iran and maybe even Saudi Arabia we will truly be a hyper power and total rulers of the world. With strategically placed forces and puppet governments we not only impose our will but our companies get the contracts. As a side note we can eradicate radical Islam, liberalize that religion to a "religion of peace" and force a peace between the Arabs and Israel - peace and safety, a world safe for democracy and all that.
So with England on our side and forces in eastern Europe and all oil purchases remaining in dollars and not in eruos France and Germany and their dream of a powerful EU are smashed. With our forces all over central Asia and in Japan and Korea we have China hemmed in. The result - Pax Americana. New World Order. No longer a distant dream , a very near reality.</P.