Alfred McCoy is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the author of many books and articles on the nature of global power. He has written an article chronicling four legacy empires (France, Russia, China, and the US) and their declines.
He starts with France. The details of its colonial heyday were relatively unknown to me.
Let’s start with the French neocolonial imperium in northern Africa, which can teach us much about the way our world order works and why it’s fading so fast. As a comparatively small state essentially devoid of natural resources, France won its global power through the sort of sheer ruthlessness — cutthroat covert operations, gritty military interventions, and cunning financial manipulations — that the three larger empires are better able to mask with the aura of their awesome power.
For 60 years after its formal decolonization of northern Africa in 1960, France used every possible diplomatic device, overt and covert, fair and foul, to incorporate 14 African nations into a neo-colonial imperium covering a quarter of Africa that critics called Françafrique.
…From Paris’s perspective, the aim of the game was the procurement of cut-rate commodities — minerals, oil, and uranium — critical for its industrial economy. To that end, Foccart proved a master of the dark arts, dispatching mercenaries and assassins in covert operations meant to eternally maximize French influence.
…By 2020, however, nationalist consciousness against repeated transgressions of their sovereignty was rising in many of those relatively new countries, putting pressure on French forces to withdraw. As its troops were expelled from Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, Russia’s secretive Wagner Group of mercenaries moved in and, by 2023, had become increasingly active there. Just last month, the foreign minister of Chad announced that it was time for his country “to assert its sovereignty” by expelling French forces from their last foothold in the Sahel, effectively ending Françafrique after 60 years of neocolonial dominion.
In those same months, Chad also expelled a U.S. Special Forces training unit, while nearby Niger cancelled U.S. Air Force access to Air Base 201 (which it had built at a cost of $110 million), leaving Russia the sole foreign power active in the region.
He then looks at Vladimir Putin’s overreach that is leading to Russia’s declinee.
In recent weeks, however, Putin’s geopolitical construct suffered a serious blow when rebels suddenly swept into Damascus, sending Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad fleeing to Moscow and ending his family’s more than 50 years in power. After suffering a stunning 700,000 casualties and the loss of 5,000 armored vehicles in three years of constant warfare in Ukraine, Russia had simply stretched its geopolitical reach too far and no longer had sufficient aircraft to defend Assad. In fact, there are signs that Russia is pulling out of its Syrian bases and so losing a key pivot for power projection in the Mediterranean and northern Africa.
Meanwhile, as NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte condemned the “escalating campaign of Russia’s hostile actions” and its attempt to “crush our freedom and way of life,” Western Europe began ramping up its defense industries and cutting its economic ties to Russia. If Senator John McCain was right when, in 2014, he called Russia “a gas station masquerading as a country,” then the rapid switch to alternative energy across Eurasia could, within a decade, rob Moscow of the finances for further adventures, reducing Russia, now also harried by economic sanctions, to a distinctly secondary regional power.
He then takes on China, whose empire was less about territorial annexation and more about using its rapidly growing economic power to dominate countries and regions. But that growth has stalled leading to unrest, especially among the young.
But there are ample signs that its economic juggernaut may have reached its limits under a Communist command-economy. Indeed, it now appears that, in clamping an ever-tighter grip on Chinese society by pervasive surveillance, the Communist Party may be crippling the creativity of its talented citizenry.
After a rapid 10-fold expansion in university education that produced 11 million graduates by 2022, China’s youth unemployment suddenly doubled to 20% and continued climbing to 21.3% a year later.
…The country’s macroeconomic statistics are growing ever grimmer as well. After decades of rip-roaring growth, its gross domestic product, which peaked at 13%, has recently slumped to 4.6%… .. Seeking markets beyond its flagging domestic economy, China, which already accounted for 60% of global electric vehicle purchases, is launching a massive export drive for its cut-rate electric cars which is about to crash headlong into rising tariff walls globally.
…Even China’s daunting military may be a bit of a paper tiger. After years of cloning foreign weapons, Beijing’s arms exports have reportedly dropped in recent years after buyers found them technologically inferior and unreliable on the battlefield.
And finally he looks at the US.
When it comes to that other great imperial force on Planet Earth, let’s face it, Donald Trump’s second term is likely to mark the end of America’s near-century as the world’s preeminent superpower. After 80 years of near-global hegemony, there are arguably five crucial elements necessary for the preservation of U.S. world leadership: robust military alliances in Asia and Europe, healthy capital markets, the dollar’s role as the globe’s reserve currency, a competitive energy infrastructure, and an agile national security apparatus.
However, surrounded by sycophants and suffering the cognitive decline that accompanies aging, Trump seems determined to exercise his untrammeled will above all else. That, in turn, essentially guarantees the infliction of damage in each of those areas, even if in different ways and to varying degrees.
…Convinced above all else of his own “genius,” Trump seems destined to damage the key economic components of U.S. global power. With his inclination to play favorites with tariff exemptions and corporate regulation, his second term could give the term “crony capitalism” new meaning, while degrading capital markets. His planned tax cuts will add significantly to the federal deficit and national debt, while degrading the dollar’s global clout, which has already dropped significantly in the past four years.
In defiance of reality, he remains wedded to those legacy energy sources, coal, oil, and natural gas. In recent years, however, the cost of electricity from solar and wind power has dropped to half that of fossil fuels and is still falling. For the past 500 years, global power has been synonymous with energy efficiency. As Trump tries to stall America’s transition to green energy, he’ll cripple the country’s competitiveness in countless ways, while doing ever more damage to the planet.
When I step back and try to take a long view, it seems the US is in the state of late-stage monopolistic capitalism, where the productive energies unleashed by early competitive capitalism have been exhausted and all that is left is an eruption of giddy wealth accumulation by a few monopolists who pick over the decaying ruins of the decaying empire before the system crashes.
Françafrique has been consigned to history for some time, so there’s no new perspective there. As for the other three “empires”, they’re not really empires like empires of the past were.
As regards Russia, the collapse of the USSR empire would have been a better subject for the article. After that, many countries that were formerly in the Warsaw pact or sitting on the fence did join NATO. NATO is not an empire though. The EU is more of an empire, but it’s not one that spreads by military action and it doesn’t demand that much from its members (well, from my outsider’s perspective). As the UK discovered, you can even leave it and go it alone without any hostile repercussions, but you may still wish you hadn’t.
McCain description of Russia “a gas station masquerading as a country” oversimplifies Russia’s vast resource wealth. Russia is in no danger of losing its clout anytime soon. A lot of us would like to see Russia dwindle into insignificance; I say, beware of wishful thinking. The attack on Ukraine was a wake up call. The media trumpets every small Ukraine gain, but not so much their losses. The war continues. Eventually the war will come to an end, and that may be soon once orange leader takes his throne and the US stops financing Ukraine’s war effort. The final border will not favour Ukraine; the only real question is how much land Ukraine will end up ceding.
Russia has revealed its true colours once again, if anyone still had any doubt. It will attack any country with a land border that it thinks it can beat; hell, it would attack China if it could win (it can’t). Not anyone in NATO or CSTO or OTS though. Where does that leave? Finland were smart and joined NATO. If I were Georgia I would look out.
China never really had an empire as such outside of China itself, but it did act all imperial-like when it took over Tibet. It does see Taiwan as its property, and that won’t change. Eventually Taiwan will become part of China one way or the other, but China are content to play the long game. Hong Kong can show how that might happen. China’s military force is massive, and how antiquated it might be is a subject of speculation. Taiwan only maintains its independence while China forbears.
It is fortunate that the disputed lands between China and India are so inhospitable. They can play war games, but neither really wants that territory, they just don’t want the other side there.
As for the US, like Russia, it joins in the collective ravishing of the Middle East, but I wouldn’t say the US has an empire. No country rules the Middle East. There has been fighting and raping of the Middle East since the dawn of time, and the introduction of Israel has guaranteed that that will continue long into the next century.
The US would have an empire if NATO became synonymous with the US -- that’s something for NATO members to be wary of. I can’t predict what will happen there, only that it’s certain that orange leader will look for ways to benefit from it. There’s been lots of speculation as to what orange leader will do with his next power trip. I would look at the last one for predictions, except that I expect even more self-serving and revenge stuff to happen. But what do you expect from a criminal.
So in summary, although the article has some food for thought, I don’t see it as particularly groundbreaking. The pertinent question is the one given at its end: “So, you might ask, if those four empires do crumble or even collapse, what comes next?” But there was no attempt to answer that.
It’s going to be an interesting four years. Trump explicitly refused to rule out using military force to get what he wants. Invading Panama (or threatening to) is one thing -- it’s been done by the US before, in my lifetime -- but threatening to invade/take over Greenland is quite another. As of now, Greenland is essentially EU territory, albeit with an active independence movement. I’d be fascinated to see how a hostile US invasion of EU territory would go. I suspect it would go swimmingly for the US since the EU wouldn’t be belligerent/idiotic enough to put up anything approaching a fight, which Trump would simplistically (and correctly) interpret as weakness. And if the EU did put up a fight, Trump is stupid and dangerous enough to give them one, and I’m not convinced there’s anyone who could stop him, other than a mass decision by the armed forces to disregard orders of the commander in chief.
My mind then wanders to how much of a fight Denmark could put up… and whether it could count on any help from other EU nations… say, France, who would be able if highly unlikely to be inclined to lob up an SLBM or two pour discourager les autres. I can’t see it, but then four years ago I couldn’t see Trump being the candidate again, much less the actual president.
Hostile American troops, boots on the ground in Greenland without permission -- is anyone prepared to stick their neck out and say it won’t happen in the next four years? Not me.
file thirteen @#2,
Historian Daniel Immerwhar argues that the US does indeed have an empire but that it has been more successful in hiding it. I have written about his book How to Hide an Empire in several posts.
@ #2: There’s also the interesting question as to what Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty means if the attacker is a NATO member. The treaty contains some fairly careful definition of what counts as an attack for the purposes of Article 5 in terms of who or what is under attack and where, but it says absolutely nothing about who the attack is by, presumably because when it was drafted nobody imagined the scenario of one NATO member attacking another.
file thirteen @ # 1: … I wouldn’t say the US has an empire.
??!? Look at a map of 917 extra-territorial military bases.
Or, ask anyone between the Rio Grande and Tierra del Fuego about that.
file thirteen
I mean, the rest of your richly-fiskable comment aside have you never heard of an exclusive economic zone?
(Wrote a long comment, but during the editing phase I got distracted by work and it got eaten. 🙂 Take 2, the abbreviated version…)
Pierce @#5, Mano @#2:
When I think of historic empires, I think of empires that were formed by conquest (eg. Roman, British). After taking over, they imposed governments, demanded tribute, and ruled.
The modern empires mentioned by McCoy are at best shadows of those. Even Iraq, a country relatively recently taken by military force, is neither directly ruled nor directly provides tribute to the US. While Iraq has provided some “reparations” to the US, and there are plenty of shady business deals with US firms, there’s nothing like the over $50 billion that Iraq paid to Kuwait in compensation for the gulf war.
Turkey, according to Pierce’s link and apologies for cherry-picking, has more overseas bases than the US but I haven’t seen talk of a Turkish empire. But perhaps it exists. Perhaps the empires being discussed are of a modern form, with the “ruling” being one of extortion: “do as we say, or we leave you to your enemies.” But if that’s the case, why speculate about their decline? I see no decline: it seems very much business as usual.
Now I’m confused about what everyone means by “empire”. Consider, Finland joined NATO. Did that expand a US empire? If so, how, and doesn’t that fly against what McCoy wrote? But if not, why not?
badland @#6:
What does “richly-fiskable” mean?
Which is pretty much what Russia, China and the USA all did during the heyday of modern imperialism, from the mid-17th through the mid-20th centuries. These three -- the “Great Powers” of today in military terms (economically, Russia is a minnow) were the empires that managed to hang on to most of their conquests -- perhaps because their expansion was mostly overland. Russia actually began somewhat earlier than the other two, with the expansion into Siberia and at the expense of the fragments of the Mongol Empire to the south. It reached its apogee in 1945, suffered a considerable setback in 1991, but Putin is intent on reversing that as far as possible. The Chinese Empire roughly doubled in area during the Qing period (1644-1911) -- only in the 19th century did it become in turn the prey of European and Japanese imperialists. That expansion included not only Tibet, but East Turkestan (“Xinjiang”) and indeed Taiwan -- annexed in 1683. As for the USA, its imperial expansion at the expense of American Indians, European powers and Mexico is far too often held to be somehow more justified than the imperialist carve-ups of Africa, much of Asia, the Americas and Oceania by European powers.
I wish I were as confident as Alfred McCoy about the decline of Russia, China and the USA as imperial powers. Russia may have lost a useful ally/puppet in Assad, but as far as I can see hopes and expects to retain its bases in Syria. As McCoy notes, it has greatly expanded its power in west Africa. And it seems only too likely to destroy Ukraine as an independent state, after which Moldova, Georgia and -- if NATO disintegrates, the Baltic States will be the next targets. China is pushing to dominate the South China Sea and Xi has been explicit about his willingness to use force to subdue Taiwan. While its economic growth has slowed, it is still at a rate the USA, let alone western Europe and Japan, would love to have. And (as is the case elsewhere) we are told both that there are (or are going to be) too many people without jobs and that too few babies are being born to grow up and do the jobs needed to support the old. As for the USA, its economy has recovered well from Covid, and Trump could well be quite serious about seizing the Panama Canal zone and Greenland (if not Canada or parts of it). His siding with Musk against the MAGA base over H1B visas hints that he may refrain from the more obviously economically damaging actions he promised around immigration and tariffs. Or, admittedly, he may not. What will most likely be the downfall of all these empires is climate disruption and other environmental disasters. But it’s likely conflict between them for resources as that disruption worsens will set off nuclear war.
> Vladimir Putin’s overreach that is leading to Russia’s decline
The new Russian Federation looks like it is going to go the same way that the Soviet Union went--penniless, no economy to speak of, the youth of an entire generation pointlessly spent on stupid wars and general bitterness of the ruled against the rulers, bankrupted by NATO in general and the US in particular. It’s never ceased to amaze me that Russia could produce so many intellectuals and still have zero talent for ruling itself. The Russian economy will take a generation or more to recover. The US and NATO can afford to outspend Putin on military weapons and materiél. Just like in the Cold War.
> Chad also expelled a U.S. Special Forces training unit, while nearby Niger cancelled U.S. Air Force access to Air Base 201 (which it had built at a cost of $110 million), leaving Russia the sole foreign power active in the region.
Yes, that worked out *so* well for the ‘stans, particularly Kazakhstan. Just ask Semipalatinsk.
I’m sure the Wagner Group, being the cute fluffy racist bunnies that they are, are warmly welcomed in whatever country they are trying to destabilize. Especially the ones largely inhabited by brown-skinned people.
> Even China’s daunting military may be a bit of a paper tiger. After years of cloning foreign weapons, Beijing’s arms exports have reportedly dropped in recent years after buyers found them technologically inferior and unreliable on the battlefield.
Just ask the Russians and North Koreans in Ukraine.
China’s biggest problem is that it is running out of water and has the second largest population on earth. (India has the same problem, albeit with the largest population on earth, mostly because it relies on the same rivers and glacial snowmelt as China). That lack of water is going to drive China into the ground--without water, there is no agriculture (China is already particularly vulnerable on that front--it hasn’t been able to feed its population via domestic agriculture for *decades* and that problem is only going to get worse with climate change), no electricity, no industry. And thirsty and starving people are a volatile people--people who foment rebellion, insurrection, coups and civil wars. Look how many overthrown governments and rebellions started because people were hungry and thirsty. The most recent was the Arab Spring. The bulk of wars on this planet usually started with drought and/or famine. Nixon’s price controls of food were a failed attempt to keep Americans from punishing the Republicans at the ballot box and him in particular. People who are well fed and and happy are seldom revolutionaries.
China’s only real threat is to its neighbors, particularly Taiwan. The odds that it will have blue water capability in any real capacity are slim and none. China is building aircraft carriers and currently has… two. Unfortunately for China, there are reports that their naval fighter planes cannot launch from the first ship with a full fuel and munition load. Oops!
Given that the first two aircraft carriers were built from scrapped Russian and Australian ships (basically, China took a beater car and fixed it up… kind of) I have my doubts about the carriers’ ability to withstand heavy seas, especially in the face of increasingly violent storms brought on by climate change. Cat 4 storms are going to become increasingly common, which is not good news for China’s aircraft carriers.
> Convinced above all else of his own “genius,” Trump seems destined to damage the key economic components of U.S. global power.
The orange dumpster fire will undoubtedly damage the US both economically and politically. The one bright spot in what will undoubtedly be a hellish four years is that, while the rest of the world isn’t all that fond of Americans, they are definitely fond of the US’s cheap agricultural exports and they *love* the stability of the US dollar. The US is the breadbasket that feeds the world. The Arab Spring was started in part due to the high food prices caused by a shift in US farming, from wheat to corn for ethanol. That shift raised global food prices so much (relatively speaking) that it lit the spark that started the various rebellions and uprisings that were collectively called the Arab Spring. The US dollar is (for now anyway) the global reserve currency, if only because of a lack of more appealing choices. If the US dollar goes down, it will take approximately a third of the world currencies (and economies) with it, because those currencies are not backed by gold, they are backed by the US dollar. An additional third of the world’s economies are so tightly tied to the US economy that if the US goes down they take those economies with them. The US empire continues to exist on enlightened self interest from other countries, not friendship or love. The likeliest competitors for global reserve currency are the BRIC countries, which the rest of the planet doesn’t particularly trust, given their volatile economies and generally authoritarian governments. While the US is becoming increasingly authoritarian, it has not achieved levels similar to Russia or China.
The French-inspired wars over North Africa killed about 2 million people including some French. In a direct way the colonialist wars in North Africa are responsible for the waves of migrants that are driving nationalist and racist Europeans crazy -- when the European powers agreed with the US to overthrow Libya a lot of people got on the move because they knew there was going to be decades of insurgency and counter-insurgency. Ditto Syria. And Israel is continuing to collapse Lebanon.
When the European powers re-divided the world after WW1 ended, they created the situation for endless disasters. But it was based in part on dividing up the Ottoman Empire among the winners. It’s still imperialism when you’re trading parts of former empires like pokemons.
The French and Belgians were horrible but the British were the worst. I read somewhere that “day we got free from Britain” is the most widely-celebrated holiday on Earth, on different days but something like 130 countries.
Re Turkey’s idea of recreating the Ottoman Emipire, there seems to be hints that Erdoğan has some thoughts on this though it’s hard to judge his ambitions
It does look like he wants to keep Idlib and may be making a land grap while trying to eliminate the Kurds in North East Syria
I don’t know if people have noticed Turkey and the USA are, at least of two or three days ago, are fighting a proxy war in North East Syria with The Turkey-backed Free Syrian Army (may have a new name) against the US-backed Kurds.
He also seems to have been working on closer ties with Azerbaijan in the last few years. Turkey still hosts the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), essentially a set of Uighur terrorists/independence fighters but they are a legacy group that, IIRC, have been based in Istanbul since before WWII.
McCoy seems to be believing Ukrainian/US estimates of Russian causality figures.
Mediazona in cooperation with the BBC probably has the best estimates of Russian fatalities and they put the count at ~89,000 though this is likely a bit low for technical reasons in how they collect data.
If Senator John McCain was right when, in 2014, he called Russia “a gas station masquerading as a country,”
McCain had no clue about Russia. As “file thirteen” says Russia has tremendous resources. Up until 2022, Russia and Ukraine used to flip between first and second place in wheat exports. IIRC the IMF has just revised their figures to say that it is now number four in PPP GDP.
Interestingly enough, Russia seems to have self-sufficient in most staple food food products. European sanctions, starting in 2014 have done wonders for Russian agriculture.