Comparing The United States As A Formal And Informal Empire

In this essay I will argue that we still do live in a world of Empire possibly Empires but compared to Britain’s former Empires today we live in an age where spread of political, economic and cultural values are not through military means but rather due to globalisation which spreads Empire(s)’ influence across the world, although there are still few cases where military means are used as means of intervention. My main argument will revolve around what is presumed to be the world’s current leader, the United States, arguing that the United States is both a Formal and Informal Empire. In context of being a Formal Empire, my key example would be US intervention in the Middle and being an Informal Empire through international institutions such

As defined by Michael Doyle, an empire is ‘a system of interaction between two political entities, one of which, the dominant metro pole, exerts political control over the internal and external policy – the effective sovereignty – of the other, the subordinate periphery’ (Walter Scheidel, 2006, P.3). This can also be seen as the definition of a Formal Empire which I will use to back up my approach of US military intervention in the Middle East as well as their influence on local political structure. According to Lake (1996, P.9), Informal Empire is one state controls indirectly substantial residual rights in the other which is nominally sovereign but functionally dependent and therefore controllable agent in the subordinate state. In my argument, I will extend this view of Informal Empire to the extent of both direct economic and political influence of the United States across the world and also the indirect influence of US culture against local cultures around the

According to Arvind Subramanian (2011), he believed that by 2030 that relative US decline will lead to a more near-unipolar world dominated by China compared to a multi-polar world dominated by the current major superpower and rising China. However, I disagree with this statement as China might be a rising power that might overcome the United State economically, there are other aspects which China has not yet come to conquer just as much, the United States’ military power for example is still the major military strength amongst others as well as the States’ influence culturally could not still be challenged. Although I believe that economically, China might be able to rise up and challenge the United State as being an empirical state with many economic projections made and one would be by Arvind Subramanian (2011) that by 2030, China will account to 20 percent of world GDP, 15 percent under the United States and with the U.S debt it wouldn’t be impossible for China to overcome America economically. Nevertheless, although there is an inevitable possibility that China might rise up to challenge America economically, I still stand with my point that China has a long way to go if they were to be at par with United States’ empirical