Any discussion of this question should probably consider why countries and organisations are imperialistic, and the relationship between this and right wing politics.
Right wing politics
Lets assume that there are four dominant varieties of right wing politics in the modern world… [This may get expanded later, like most of these blogs, this is a work in progress]
- Nationalist
- Pro-capitalist, pro-corporatist,
- Theocratic, And
- Militaristic
Obviously, organisations and countries can appear to be a combination of some, or all, of these varieties, and they are not completely exclusive to the ‘right’, but they are extremely common in the right. All of these varieties of right wing politics tend to be imperialistic.
Nationalists can be imperialistic because they:
- consider they are better and stronger than others
- consequently others are inferior and deserve to be ruled by them,
- they need more land to support their population,
- they need cheap, or slave, labor,
- they want to protect the homeland from everyone who is envious of their superiority and wants to bring them down
- they need to rescue their ‘own’ people who live in another country from that country, and bring them into the national fold.
- Imperialism becomes a continuation of successful national politics
Pro-corporate rulers can be imperialistic because:
- they want guaranteed markets for their corporations,
- they want guaranteed resources for their corporations,
- they want cheap labor or production for their corporations,
- they want to protect or control their corporations’ trade routes,
- they want to protect their corporations’ private property in other places,
- they wish to extend regulations which benefit corporations over people throughout the world,
- they see themselves as rugged individualists, and hence better than other people,
- like nationalists, they like proving how superior they are.
- Imperialism is seen as a continuation of successful trade
Theocrats can imperialistic because:
- they have the true religion and other people must share in it to be saved,
- it is sinful if they don’t make sure other countries have the true religion,
- to make sure its the true religion they have to control that religion,
- they are really virtuous, or more virtuous than other corrupt places, because they have the true religion, and that will be decisive in any struggle,
- they are better than other people,
- God is on their side, so they will be victorious in the long run.
- Imperialism is seen as a temporary and necessary part of obedience to God, spreading his word, and bringing about his will. It is, ultimately, a source of good. etc.
Militarists are imperialistic
- because the point of a military is to have wars, to compete with others in matters of arms, etc.
Now there may exist some right wing governments who think that extending power is dangerous, and that they have no business interfering with other people, but these people are rare and they are usually happy to interfere with the lives of their own people to make them virtuous, and that interference is easy to extend to others elsewhere as a matter of national pride.
We can also note that most of these forms of politics tend to be authoritarian.
Nationalist because some one has to represent the nation and tell others what that is, suppress those who disagree and reinforce whatever they approve in the nation’s hierarchies. Nations tend to be identified with ‘kinship’ and race, so they devote a fair amount of energy making sure that non-kin and non true-race people are kept down.
Pro-corporate tends to be authoritarian because they have to enforce property laws, massively unequal incomes and privileges, force people to work for others, and defend the hierarchy and crony capitalism that evolves. They also have to defend whatever makes money that serves them. So they can support companies that corrupt, or destroy the whole system, as is illustrated by the current support for fossil fuel companies and attacks on IT companies. They may also need support for the trade wars which support certain companies profits.
Theocrats are authoritarian because they have to enforce the word of God, or the conventions which have grown around God’s laws, they need to stop other religions and ideas taking off and seducing the innocent and, because some people are considered to be particularly expert or holy, the religious hierarchies need enforcing against sinners.
Militarism just comes with authoritarianism.
The ‘Left’
There are also ‘Liberals’, may tend to try and build alliances through promoting their own political and economic systems in other countries, but this is often hard to distinguish from imperialism as far as the ‘victims’ are concerned – their world and culture is being changed to resemble that of another another place, often without consultation, especially consultation with the less powerful.
Left wing workers paradises may also be authoritarian and imperialistic to protect themselves against the rest of the world (as when facing the war against the Soviets after WW1), and to extend the supposed virtues of their system outwards to others to stop the challenge against them – this usually helps confirm any dictatorial tendencies they have.
So most of the common forms of government have imperialistic tendencies. All organisations which need to suppress opposition to survive, tend to become authoritarian or imperialistic, whatever their primary reason for being. This imperialism is magnified because common forms of government in the world today are competitive with other governments.
The End of Western Imperialism?
Given this, the most likely end for imperialism is to be defeated by another rising set of imperial powers.
This option in the contemporary world is made more likely because of the exhaustion of US power, and economy, in a pointless set of imperialistic wars started under GW Bush probably for reasons of nationalism (“New American Century”), Pro-corporatism (protecting US oil interests), Theocracy (Bringing Armageddon and the new godly world closer) and Militarism (we have the best and most expensive military in the world, and have to show it off).
There is some evidence (see Naomi Klein) that there was no plan for the aftermath of conquest of Iraq because the Bush admin hoped that with no government and no regulation the libertarian free market paradise would emerge and be a showplace for the world. If this was intended, it obviously did not happen.
Collapse is the fate of most imperialisms:
- It is harder to hold onto territorial gains than to destroy those powers holding territory, especially with modern weaponry
- The expense of conquest eventually becomes greater than the gains
- Supply lines and back up gets exhausted, stretched or becomes too expensive
- Information becomes more distorted as it passes up the chain of command, and nobody knows what is really going on
- The conquerors get fed up of the effort of maintaining conquest and the cost in lives loses popularity back home
- Without massive local support, conquerors can find themselves in an endless guerilla war
- The harder the conquerors impose their order, the easier it is to see as imposed, annoying and incompetent
- The wider the front or border, and the more expanded the empire, the more enemies it encounters or generates and the fewer resources it has to fight them all
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