As capital extends out over the entire globe, transmitting its particular sublime pleasures through cultural transmission and through example by material good, it encourages the growth of sympathetic capitals, with their own growing masses aided by the supportive structures of nation states, and the historical material developmental patterns peculiar to those regions.
It is in the nature of capital to colonize, and through that colonization, it begets itself, only to become antagonistic to itself. The self-preserving and other-antagonizing instincts of capital are manifested in popular political rhetoric, so we see the glowering specters of Russias, Chinas, North Koreas, and Irans coming to take our freedom.
The elites in those countries may very well be interested in the bullish and negative freedom that the U.S. empire has so pugnaciously secured for itself. Who knows what shapes the other national empires would form in the absence of real constraints brought about by the machinations of the hegemon. No doubt we have seen all sorts of terrible cruelties occur in the maintenance of those other empires, but as is often the case, these are cruelties that are rising up to and mirroring the cruelty of a world empire that really does want all of it.
We saw in the run up to the great wars, and throughout the course of those wars, an increasingly muscular German empire that had its sights set on the majesties of the British empire itself, and which sought to mimic it and eventually acquire its status. And conversely, all of the early industrial world admired and sought to replicate infrastructure like the German post office, and eventually, German industrial engineering.
And so much of the popular contemporary political rhetoric is obvious projection on the part of a paranoid and entitled nation fearing for its outsized privileges. The interconnectedness and interdependency of the world-system is partially revealed by those other nations' mild geopolitical responses to extremely aggressive claims and intentions on the part of the United States. Certainly there is much tough talk and political theater in many of these nations which is more for the benefit of the mainstream ideology of their citizens, but all in all the geopolitical behavior of other nations has betrayed a realistic understanding of the interdependency of their capital on the hegemonic capital itself, so we see measured negotiations and mild defensive steps taken in the face of U.S. aggression.
Of course we do see this state of affairs gradually shifting as sympathetic tensions arise. The BRICS quietly make their arrangements to set up separate trade agreements, infrastructure, and banking systems, and the U.S. grows more aggressive in encircling them, interfering with their elections and global influence by proxy - ironically enough, and ramping up popular rhetoric against them.
And so empires not only rise, they inspire others to rise in turn, and the momentum from the rising continues on and begets more rising. And all of it is connected to itself, and influences itself, like the alternating waves and valleys in a churning ocean.
