COMPARISON OF BRITAIN’S FORMER EMPIRE TO AMERICA’S TODAY
Britain often ruled directly, with a viceroy or
governor-general, in the countries of its empire. It approved all high
officials and the British monarch was generally the monarch of the various
countries. It was always physically present in a public way. It even supplied a
police force in many places, one often consisting of willing locals led by
British officers and non-coms.
Over time, the system underwent many alterations, including concepts
like "dominion status" and local parliaments. Gradually the British
Commonwealth system replaced the more dependent status of vice-regal and imperial
governments.
British world maps had the empire's countries in pink.
American maps don't do this. America pretends not to rule, but it is an
elaborate charade.
America’s empire has set a pattern of allowing each country
to rule its internal affairs and even some part of its international relations.
The appearance of democracy is regarded as desirable but not essential. The
list of the American empire’s democracies abroad includes some pretty filthy
operations – outfits like Marcos in the Philippines, Syngman Rhee in South
Korea, or the crooked PRI Party which ruled Mexico for seventy years.
In less stable places, local dictators or kings are just fine,
so long as they follow America’s essential imperial rules. Examples include
Jordan's King or Egypt's President or the past Shah of Iran or the King of
Saudi Arabia.
The key rules America imposes are that the local government
toes the American line in all important foreign affairs and that the government
never disturb the operations of American foreign investors. No nationalization
or excessive taxation or interference in labor markets is allowed.
All bets are off when these rules are violated.
Indeed, enforcement is a key job of the bright psychopaths working
for the operations branch of CIA. They are a non-uniformed army of enforcement
and intimidation, and they have some extraordinary resources to employ right
down to blackmailing leaders, counterfeiting the local currency to devalue it,
working with opposition groups and financing them, assassinations if required,
and precipitating coups with smuggled weapons and money and expert advice.
Sometimes things go too far in a subject country, and direct
military intervention is used, as in Panama some years back. Direct
intervention in the postwar period of the 20th century, the period
which characterizes American working vigorously towards running a full world
empire, was avoided if covert work could do the job, but America seems to have
grown a little less reluctant to be seen directly interfering in people’s
affairs in recent years. Its aggression today gets pretty blatant, as towards
Russia or China and especially towards the more independent-minded leaders of
the Middle East.
Now, all of this applies to the seemingly independent parts
of the American Empire. There is a "first tier" - places like the
Virgin Islands or Guam or Puerto Rico - that are treated differently, treated
as almost parts of the United States proper. They live in a kind of political
limbo as “territories,” a status which grew out of America’s imperial march
across the North American continent during the early 19th century.
America also holds other imperial properties – notably, a
constellation of military bases abroad - in a variety of statuses, as Cuba’s
Guantanamo Bay, a part of Cuba seized by America during its deliberately-induced
Spanish-American War with the pretense of paying for a lease. Somehow, the
lease manages never to expire despite many requests from Cuba’s government.
