Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

The United States is an Empire. Moreover, unlike past empires, it does not simply dominate a particular part of the world. No, it is unique in history in that its writ stretches to cover the whole world.

The concentration of so much power in a single country would be excessive, even if the United States were a force for good. In fact, it is a source of immense evil, of evil beyond computation. The origin of all the major political  woes of the world today can be traced back directly to the United States.

Just like the government of any other country, the United States Government acts exclusively in its own interests, that is, in the interests of that tiny elite, headed by the President, which run the country.  And that is by no means the same as saying that it is run in the interests of the long-suffering people of the United States. Far from it. However, the exclusive focus of the government of the Empire on its own interests has the following implication for the tributary states represented by the other countries of the world. They must find a way of tailoring their interests in such a way that they dovetail with those of the United States.

This has been the case for a long time and the procedure for confirming tributary status has been well honed. On accession, the US President receives a constant stream of tributary state leaders who come to press the flesh of the new hegemon and confirm their fealty. It is just as it was in Imperial Rome when the leaders of subject peoples queued up in the Forum to pledge their undying loyalty to the Imperator. After taking the pledge of allegiance, these chieftains, like the heads of today’s tributary governments, must ensure that nothing their administrations undertake is at variance with the wishes of the US Government.

All this is well-known and universally acknowledged. That is the way things are, is the reply to critics. We have to deal with the world as it is.

If the United States were a force for good in the world, that would at least mitigate the abject surrender of sovereignty by the tribute states. However, since that is not the case, these states are complicit in all the evil committed by the forces of the Empire. Often referred to by the euphemism “allies”, the tributary states are in fact “accomplices”.

The  geography of US international crimes extends to all parts of the globe:  Nicaragua, Chile, Vietnam, Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc.  The methods used by the Empire are the same as those used by the Nazis: murder and torture.

When the US wanted to transport kidnapped prisoners to countries where their torture would not be hindered by legal restrictions, the tributary countries (Poland, Romania, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, etc ) trampled over one another to offer secret prisons where this could be done. Cuba is not usually thought of as a US tributary. However, at the start of the “War on Terror”, presumably in order to curry favour and perhaps secure an easing in the US blockade of Cuba,  the leaders of that country made it clear to visiting US statesmen that they would not object to the use of the US base at Guantánamo Bay as a US extraterritorial prison. The Cubans are pretty clued up politically and it must be assumed that they realized why the US wanted to locate its prisoners in legal limbo.