Anglo-American-Israel Empire soldiers in different periods. File photos.
By The Anti Empire Project – Jun 27, 2o25
After England and America, it’s Israel’s turn to lead the Empire
The Roman Empire collapsed when the city of Rome fell to the Visigoths in 410 – or did it? By the time of the sack, Rome was no longer the capital of the Western Roman Empire – other cities had played that role for over a hundred years (Milan and then Ravenna). What’s called the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital in Constantinople, which everyone simply called the Roman Empire, continued for a thousand more years, until it fell to Turkey in 1453.
The British Empire, a going concern since the East India Company was chartered in 1600, also never collapsed. A multi-decade, somewhat friendly, struggle for primacy with the United States over primacy over the globe-spanning financial, productive, and military arrangements of the Empire began in the 20th century. After World War 2, the capital of the Empire moved from London to Washington.
There was plenty of brutal continuity to the transfer. But with the change of capital came a change in philosophy and mode of operation.
The British Empire, whose crown jewel was India, was based on mass famines, a global grain market, manipulation of gold and silver standards, naval power, a balance of power in Europe, strict racial hierarchy taught at the universities that trained the elite, and the use of subject races to fight one another.
When it moved to America, the Empire’s crown jewel was the whole American continent. The post-WW2 version was based on fossil fuels, a dollar standard, air power, the subordination of allies, a military-industrial complex that encompassed science, engineering, and industrial might, coups d’etat, and increasingly, sanctions regimes.
Racial ideology in the US-led version was full of contradictions: co-opting decolonization struggles and the ideological battle with communism required a nominal disavowal of racial hierarchy, even as racism motivated many elite actions and underpinned the system of neocolonial theft of resources from the Global South and from Indigenous lands. No longer colonies, nominally sovereign nations were led by local elites who put their lands and their peoples to work to make the rich countries richer. Those who refused would see their countries bombed, sanctioned, or both, until an overthrow could be effected and a compliant local elite installed.
The smooth functioning of the US Empire occurred through a host of multilateral institutions: the United Nations, headquartered in New York, showed that the world was united under US leadership, with the UN Security Council guaranteeing that wars could be stopped by the will of the world’s powers. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund promised development to those Global South countries that followed America’s rules. The International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and the World Trade Organization promised that international disputes could be resolved without violence.
Elections, in the US and throughout the world, let off tremendous amounts of steam when the masses got angry – no need for revolution when you can vote the bastards out.
The change of imperial capital was announced to the world in 1956 during the Suez Crisis. The story is familiar: Egypt asserted sovereignty over the Suez Canal. Britain, France, and Israel invaded. The United States ordered them to stand down, and they did. The imperial capital had moved. If the British wanted to do something, they would have to ask America first.
In the 21st century, we are living through an analogous, multi-decade, friendly struggle that has moved the imperial capital from Washington to Tel Aviv.
We are living through the Suez Crisis of our time, our own announcement that the capital has moved. At several moments during this genocide, the US announced a ceasefire – including, at one point, not even vetoing a ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council. Biden announced a ceasefire in May 2024, Witkoff announced one in January 2025. The Israelis ignored the first, rolled back the second. The message for the US: Israel will decide when the war ends, and the US will have to accept it, like the US decided that the Suez Crisis would stop and the British had to accept it.
European Decoupling From American Imperialism Is a Matter of Global Security
In the new, Israel-led version of the empire, West Asia is the crown jewel. Like the wars of the East India Company to make India into British India, like the Indian Wars of US land theft and genocide, the Middle East today suffers endless wars for the goal of Greater Israel.
In the Israeli-led version of Empire, racial hierarchy is back with a vengeance: Cecil Rhodes’s most racist pronouncements can’t compete with the daily posts of the average pro-Israel twitter user. The disobedient are punished not with a coup d’etat that brings a pliant leader to power, but with genocide against the whole population. Surrender is irrelevant: the surrendered are genocided along with the defiant. Air power remains the principal hard power tool, while ground operations are basically anti-civilian terror operations on medium (assassinations, raids) or mass (gaza genocide) scale. Media and psychological operations have a growing primacy. Inducing psychological collapse is the main objective, in the hope that physical collapse will follow so that genocide can proceed. All the US-built multilateral institutions have been discredited: International courts, the security council, can issue rulings that are then ignored. The atomic energy agency passes intelligence on to Israel to help their assassination planning. Elections have been shown to make no difference, as genocide proceeds through changes of political party.
Different imperial premises, different kinds of resistance.
The Global South’s peoples fought British colonialism wielding the ideology of national sovereignty and the construction of nation-states to replace the colonies. They fought the American Empire with guerrilla warfare and resistance to military occupation.
The people of West Asia are fighting by not surrendering, enduring the assassinations, sieges, bombings, and psychological operations, defeating the ground forces, and developing missiles to retaliate for attacks made by Israel’s airpower. Those inclined to direct action in the West resort to attacking the fragile and still very important nodes of weapons production. For the Resistance, defense is based on endurance, without trying to match the empire’s specialty of assassination. Attack is based on physical attrition, without trying to match the empire’s specialty in psychological warfare.
Israel specializes in assassination; Iran in missile technology. The missiles can’t stop the assassins from killing and the assassinations can’t stop the missiles from landing. Who made the right investment?
The Roman Republic was founded around 509 BC. The capital was moved to Constantinople around 900 years later and the Empire lived on for another thousand years, until 1453. The British Empire was shorter-lived, around 345 years between 1600-1945, its American incarnation lasting around 80 years from 1945-2023. The Israeli-led iteration is burning itself out quickly. From here it doesn’t look like it will last long.
(Substack)