''The coming crisis of American imperialism''

YellowTimes.org) – The American response to September 11th did not change the terms of international relations. It only enhanced and deepened a trend that was manifest in Bush's foreign policy from the beginning. Surprisingly, this trend should give pause to the corporate executives who lined up behind Bush's candidacy. Unsurprisingly, nobody else wins either. Bush is the ultimate lose-lose president.

Before the election of George Bush, the U.S. dominated a vast American empire. That empire had enormous military might, more powerful than anything ever dreamed of. U.S. military power was visible in a host of military bases around the world, from Germany and Saudi Arabia to Okinawa. However, since the end of the Cold War, U.S. military forces rarely functioned as U.S. military forces. They functioned as world police forces, intervening almost exclusively by invitation, with a mission to restore the peace or defeat local thugs.

In the space secured by this world police, America exercised its world domination, relatively peacefully, through a series of technocratic institutions that protected and extended the power of U.S. corporations over world production.