Brush Fires of Freedom

On May 1st 2003, George Bush announced the "end" of "major combat operations" in Iraq. At that point 139 Americans had died. Now, more than 4 years later, 3,815 members of the American Military have been killed in Iraq.  The American death toll pales in comparison to the number of dead Iraqis, what is significant is that peasant militias have managed to kill 27 times as many Americans as Iraq's central government did.

America is on the losing side of an arms race that has been going on through out history.

Kingdoms and empires are built on power disparity. War has always been the realm of the elite. A privileged warrior class, well practiced and armored, decided battles. Homer acknowledged this through the character Achilles, who demonstrated the power that even a single one of these warlords had in deciding the outcome of a battle and the importance of their armor, something that only the rich could afford.

As wealth disparity changed, so did war. Both the Greeks and the Romans rose to power by fielding citizen armies. Their middle classes(built on slavery) supplied large numbers of soldiers able to supply their own weapons. This grew the warrior class and as war became more populist, so did governance!

But with the accumulation of capital and the march of technology that power disparity is ending. From Longbows to Firearms to IEDs. From Agincourt to Lexington to Vietnam.

Mechanics and chemistry have made natural strength meaningless to martial prowess. And no longer does wealth disparity necessarily mean power disparity, guns are cheap, plentiful, and require little training. Where capital is plentiful, labor becomes relatively more valuable. The wealthy seek to employ their capital to maximize their manpower, yet a tank that can be destroyed by a homemade bomb is as relevant as knight that can be killed by a peasant's musket.  Guerrilla warfare continues to increase in lethality.

As the State's dominance of warfare has diminished it must depend even more on ideas to maintain its existence. Only two empires survived the surge of nationalism and firearms in the Post-World War II era, the US and the USSR. Both were chimeras using populist rhetoric to justify state control.

The American Empire's military supremacy over the world today is without precedent. It could send its military any where in world (not to mention completely annihilate it with nuclear weapons). The power disparity between it and other militaries in the world is immense, yet it has failed to successfully occupy the ex-colonies it has invade, countries that had been governed by the Japanese, French, and English empires only decades earlier.

Its very possible that by the time the American Empire falls no amount of military might will ever be able to recreate it.

P.S.

If anyone has any feedback or relevant sources, I'd love to hear it.