ABSTRACT
For several decades the greatest impediment to world peace – not to mention democracy and, more imminently, ecological sanity – has been the enormous reach of American imperial and military power. In 2020 Washington maintained bases in over 100 countries, was involved in several armed conflicts or proxy wars, had spent many trillions of dollars in Middle East interventions since 2001 alone, and devotes more than one trillion dollars yearly to nourish its insatiable war machine. Constraints on further growth of the military behemoth – whether from Congress, the media, of popular forces – remain virtually invisible. Postwar consolidation of the warfare state gave rise to an imperial order with a power and scope unrivalled in human history, embedded in a power structure extending far beyond the presidency or executive branch as such.
