Completely stripped of its democratic veneer, U.S. imperialism has been exposed as a system of monopoly capitalism driven by white supremacist psychopathology.
Last week, New York Times columnist Carlos Lozada in a piece entitled, Pax Americana, Meet Lax Americana, remarked,
“We had a good run – some eight decades or so – but it’s clear now that the United States has ceased to be the leader of the free world.”
Who exactly Mr. Lozada meant by “we” is a subject for another time – but I would argue that “we” certainly does not refer to the masses of poor and working class Black, Brown, Indigenous and white folk who have little to do with the barbaric and draconian imperialist and neo-colonial machinations of the U.S. empire in the same way that developing nations have little to do with the profligate greenhouse gas emissions driving and exacerbating the climate crisis. Mr. Lozada would have done well to reify what and who he meant by “we,” as it’s clear that he is referring to the cabal of the bourgeois and many elements of the petit bourgeois who, directly and indirectly, benefit from the spoils of U.S. imperialism and its global military apparatus.
At the same time, Mr. Lozada exposes himself as a member of the petit bourgeois class who seems to be mourning the fact that the U.S. has lost its standing as the “leader of the free world.” This much is clear, in the first place, because he believes that the world has been fully free at a time when U.S. international gangsterism is ubiquitous from the siege of Cuba, to the illegal kidnapping and incarceration of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the more recent war of aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the continued aiding, abetting, and financial support of the zionist ethnostate of Israel’s ongoing pogroms of genocide, ethnic cleansing and illegal occupation of Palestinian people as well as its larger campaign of imperialism in the Middle East – including its participation in the war against Iran and its recent seizure of Lebanese lands as part of its “Greater Israel” settler colonial project.
Mr. Lozada, by believing the world is “free,” is an extension of the white “supremacy” ideology and anglo-centric approach to geopolitics that centers the U.S. as the chief arbiter of what and who has the right to self-determination and people(s)-centered human rights. His approach closely mimics the same ethos communicated by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio during his remarks earlier this year at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. Rubio did not mince words as part of a soliloquy that can only be characterized as a proclamation of western, pan-European hegemony. Lozada bases his assertion that the U.S. had a “good run” for the last 80 years on the concept of Pax Americana, which he seems to believe was a beneficial world order, also elucidates a belief that U.S./European hegemony over the world is something that should be embraced as nominal. Pax Americana is unapologetically rooted in white “supremacy” ideology and European hegemony – this much is clear based on its three pillars: military credibility, economic openness, and democratic values according to a 2025 bulletin prepared by Salzburg Global. But at its core, Pax Americana is an imperialist and neo-colonial construct.In their piece, Pax Americana: How Not to Hide an Empire, University of Maryland Law Professor, Matiangai Sirleaf notes,
“Within Pax Americana, we exist under imperial rule.” They continue, “To believe you can cut off the measures deployed in territories and occupied lands before they reach the metropole is to fundamentally misapprehend Aimé Césaire’s imperial boomerang effect, your position within empire, and to misunderstand the co-constitutive nature between the periphery and the center.”
This veracious offering brings us to Lenin’s analysis on imperialism in the context of a shift in how capitalism operates – capitalism must be malleable to satisfy its rapacious appetite for expansion and extraction in perpetuity. In his book Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin explains that imperialism, “…is capitalism in that stage of development in which the domination of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the partition of all the territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers has been completed.” He then goes on to discuss how and why capitalism transforms from a pubescent stage of competitive capitalism to a higher stage of monopoly capitalism, “Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialization of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialized.” As it pertains to the socialization of monopoly capitalism, Lenin explains, “Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialization of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialization.”
Lenin’s explanation of imperialism and monopoly capitalism allows us to better understand the current manifestation of U.S. imperialism and international gangsterism. But the truth is, this is “America” and it always has been. The U.S. empire is nude and this has been apparent and transparent to oppressed and colonized people since the inception of this settler colonial nation of stolen lands. And this was certainly clear to stolen Africans who weren’t even considered an entire person in the founding documents of U.S. governance. Professor Sirleaf compounds this point, “the connections between Pax Americana’s military interventions around the globe and its settler-colonial foundations are clear. This enduring aspect of United States imperial rule is unhidden unless you choose to forcibly forget.” The clothes covering U.S. nudity, as a metaphor for the enduring aspect of the U.S. as Sirleaf characterizes, have always been an illusion to attempt to cover up the appendages required to maintain a lie of U.S. exceptionalism as the premier democracy and purveyor of individual liberties in the world. The needles and threads of racial capitalism adroitly stitched together a garment that has obscured the nudity of U.S. imperialism for more than 250 years. The Trump regime has ripped off this garment – he wants the world to see the nudity of U.S. imperialism in its purest form and its primordial ethic of white “supremacy” ideology, pan-European hegemony, patriarchy, and colonization. And in the process, Trump is actually telling the truth (for once) by naming his intention to solidify the U.S.’s role as the lead purveyor of monopoly capitalism. This explains the illegal kidnapping and incarceration of Maduro, the siege of Cuba, the role the U.S. continues to play in providing the zionist entity all of the capital and military resources to slaughter Palestinians and advance its “Greater Israel” project, and the recent myopic aggression against Iran.
While Lenin is correct in his analysis of the economic conditions and general nature of capitalism that necessitates a shift from competitive to monopoly, there is one element he did not include – the psychopathology of white “supremacy” as a catalyst of the overall equation of imperialism. As Black Alliance for Peace/North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights founder Ajamu Baraka recently discussed, “This psychopathology [of white “supremacy”] is not reducible to individual prejudice. It is a racialized, narcissistic cognitive disorder embedded in the ideological and institutional architecture of Western power.” He continues, “It centers Europe and its settler extensions as the apex of human development and renders its adherents incapable of perceiving objective reality when confronted with non-European resistance. While rooted in the historical experience of Europe and its encounters with non-European people during the expansion of European power, it can affect anyone socialized within the ideological and cultural mechanisms of the Pan-European colonial project.”
The idea of white “supremacy” as a narcissistic cognitive disorder very well explains why in addition to nations of the Global South and Asia Minor, nations that previously believed that they would benefit from Pax Americana have been put on notice by the Trump regime. To this point, Professor Sirleaf concludes,
“Recently, several pronouncements about the purported need to expand American territory have emanated from the head of the United States: “Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country.” President Donald Trump declared, “[W]e need Greenland for national security purposes.” On illegally annexing Canada and making it the 51st state, he ruminated, “Because Canada and the United States, that would really be something. You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security.”’ They add, “Speaking on his colonial fantasies to illegally assert ownership of the occupied Palestinian territories, he proclaimed, “I think the potential in the Gaza Strip is unbelievable,” and it could be “the riviera of the Middle East.” Although he has attempted to walk back some of these comments, the current occupant of the White House makes no pretense of hiding America’s empire.” Add into the mix Trump’s more recent enmity with NATO allies in Europe for refusing to participate in his Zio-American war against Iran. Trump not only called Europe out, he’s also attempting to shake them down as just yesterday he took to social media to proclaim, “All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you: Number 1, buy from the U.S., we have plenty, and Number 2, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.”
Trump has taken Baraka’s idea of psychopathology and rendered it into straight-up psychosis, while ending the idea of Pax Americana in the process. No one knows this better than Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney who earlier this year pronounced, “the old world order is not coming back.” While an abject hypocrite for turning a blind eye to numerous instances of U.S. imperialism, Carney at least had the decency to confess, ““Great powers can afford for now to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not,” further stating, “Middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”
It’s almost as if Carney understands Lenin’s characterization of imperialism more than Lenin did. J Sykes demonstrates why this may very well be the case by explaining the consequences of petit bourgeois suckers who thought they would always benefit from a capitalist system that holds up initiatives like Pax Americana. Sykes notes, “The result of [monopoly capitalism’ is that different strata among the capitalists are operating in very different ways. The petit bourgeoisie are, by and large, being crushed by the monopoly capitalist class.” He continues, “Simultaneously, non-monopoly capitalists continue to exist, but precariously, under immense pressure from the monopoly capitalists. The result is that these non-monopoly capitalists and petit bourgeoisie are buried unless they can achieve an extraordinarily high rate of exploitation,” and concludes, “But the petit bourgeoisie cannot compete effectively with the superprofits of the monopoly capitalists.” Canada, European Union Nations, and others within the NATO coalition have been slapped in the face with a dose of reality that they are the petit bourgeois scrambling to determine how best to navigate this new reality.
The apparatus of monopoly capitalism and the psychopathology of white “supremacy” can only be confronted and vanquished by a global united front of the masses who understand and believe that the pan-European hegemony, like capitalism itself, is based on contradictions and indoctrination that the material conditions we exist in are normal and inevitable. As the Islamic Republic of Iran, Cuba, the Alliance of Sahel States and other movements of the Global South and Axis of Resistance are demonstrating, this hegemony does not need to be embraced or accepted. Because Lozada is correct that the U.S is no longer the leader of a free world that never existed in the first place – but it’s not going to give up willingly as U.S. empire runs around the world proudly nude, rude, crude, and more determined than ever to furnish its capitalist dictators with the spoils of late-stage monopoly capitalism. That’s why it’s incumbent upon the masses to sew a new garment derived from a fabric of concerted and collective revolutionary struggle that is principled, resolute, and unflinching – and one that seizes the ranks of the petit bourgois and presents it with the choice of class suicide or death by monoply capitalism. For white “supremacy,” debauched by the opiate of monopoly capitalism and imperialism, will eat itself alive in thinking it’s the only way that it can survive, it will take as many of us as it can with us unless we, the masses, embrace the reality that revolution and steadfast defiance are no longer concepts of theories, they are the means of survival.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
