How is China building an empire? #1
Do you know how empires like Romans, Aztecs, Mughals, Cholas, Spanish, and British were built on? You don’t have to be a history buff to answer that question and Yes! through Military power. All of them, be it ancient, medieval, or colonial emperors, they built their empires through military conquests.
To build an empire, you need a massive army. An army that is well trained and organized led by experienced generals who can gain a victory if a war erupts. However, there is a downside to that. A huge military force is expensive and hard to maintain.
However, at the turn of the mid 20th century, the concept of building an empire has changed. After two brutal world wars, economic depressions, and freedom movements in a lot of colonies, the idea of conquering a country through military force has become irrelevant to the time, however, the conquering of nations didn’t. Hence the empire builders came up with a less expensive way to fight their war. The old school soldiers were replaced by new and more sophisticated ones called, Papers and by papers, I meant $$$. These soldiers don’t have to be trained or fed, and more importantly, won’t die. Yet they were more powerful when compared to ordinary human soldiers.
By the mid of the 20th century, two superpowers have emerged from the ruins of WW2. One became the center of Capitalism and another one for Communism. If you look at these two ideologies, Communism deals with social rights, justice, equality, etc. which in turn involves people. However, on the other hand, Capitalism deals with money and to make “certain” people rich. I double quoted the word certain because capitalism will not make everyone rich. I’m not here to draw a comparison or advocate any ideology; Each one suits a set of people. But I’m here to tell you, how one ideology failed to sustain and the other went on to build an empire.
In my personal opinion, the idea of Communism came up when the whole world was under colonial powers and was fighting wars continuously. A lot of nations were subjugated by colonial powers and were exploited. By then, naturally, people would have thought equality. However, in the middle of the 20th century, the concept of social equality alone started to wear thin. Because, by nature, all human beings wanted to live a posh life and money will definitely provide you that. That’s where Capitalism won its fight against Communism. However, the desire to live a happy and posh life was used by some chronic capitalists to exploit the people via a weapon called debt and upon which a new empire was built.
The USA during World Wars
Needless to say, the USA was not much of a world power even after the end of WWI. It sure did participate at the end of the war and played a role in ending it soon. However, it wasn’t considered as big power back then. Treaty of Versailles was signed, a huge fine was imposed on Germany for the war the Allies started and finally League of Nations was established to “prevent” any such wars in the future. The USA was part of it and played a vital role even. However, back then it had its own mess to clean up. In 1929, the country saw a major depression it has ever seen since it came to existence 150 years back. A lot of Americans lost their money, savings, and life due to it.
President Franklin.D.Roosevelt introduced New Deal in 1933 to revive the lifeline of the USA and to be honest, it didn’t work as well as he expected and yet provided a base to the country we’re seeing today. The USA was still struggling to get back on its feet and in 1939, an unfortunate ally came to its rescue.
We refer the USA as the seat of capitalism, however, the New Deal promised the workers a minimum wage, social security, effective labor laws to protect them from over exploitation. From where I see, these are all the basic concepts of Socialism. Irony????? 🤔
While the USA was dealing with the great depression and was introducing deals to save itself, Germany, on the other hand, got itself a charismatic Chancellor. He introduced a series of reforms and changed a country that was literally torn by the allied wolves a decade back. He built a military machine that no one could dare to stand in front. With great power comes great responsibilities and only a few utilize that and Adolf Hitler wasn’t one of them. He started to bully his neighbors through blitzkrieg attacks also indulged in ethnic cleansing.
Leaders of the allied nations, Great Britain and France due to its “moral obligations” declared war on September 1, 1939, against the bully thereby starting a new world war in 1939. The one they all sworn to prevent just a decade back. Though the war affected the entire globe, it helped the USA get back in the game and also set the path to become the world’s only superpower.
Since most of the Allied country’s industrial output was severely hurt due to the German attacks, the nations greatly depended on the USA, a country that lies a continent away safely from ground zero to supply them with the parts and armaments. The USA utilized this opportunity to turn its industrial might to earn fat paychecks. It turned its entire industrial zone into the military industry. In Detroit where once great cars were manufactured, it is now building battle tanks and armored vehicles to be exported to Europe.
You may wonder why am I explaining the backstory of World War 2 here? And how does this all connect to the topic? Yes, it all connects to one point called Money, which helped the USA to conquer the world for the next 30 years until they find another golden duck to provide them with money. And China is now following the footsteps of the USA to build its own empire.
I will talk more about how the USA became prominent and eventually the only superpower at the end of the 20th century in the upcoming post. Stay tuned!!
