US global ambitions keep Bush tied to Israel's brutal regime role as the ideological 'cement.
It was contested by a minority, especially during the Vietnam war, but was massively powerful and backed up by repression and surveillance - a repression which reached its height during the McCarthy period (3).
It never ceased thereafter and reached a new high point in the crushing and physical liquidation of the Black Panther movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The new McCarthyism is anti-terrorist hysteria which sees every major public event preceded by soldiers parading of the Stars and Stripes, massively increased surveillance of dissidents, the demonisation of the Muslim population and incredible repression including the secret imprisonment without trial of up to a thousand 'suspects who have disappeared without trace.
The new imperialism however is a high-risk strategy. Right-wing British academic Niall Ferguson thinks American Empire is a good thing, but won't work because the United States refuses to commit millions of its citizens to militarily occupying So the new imperialism is just an American thing, right? Not exactly! French and German opposition to the US-British war in Irag created the impression that armed globalisation was an America affair, with a tiny bit of help from the British, Spanish and Italians.
The truth is, British, French, German, Italian and Spanish troops all participated in the pre-Iraq coalition of the willing', who helped invade Afghanistan.
Germany still has 1480 troops in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force. Although they have a non-combat role, their presence creates a precedent; that German troops will be able to take part in operations 'out of region', and can play a role in the European Rapid Reaction Force.
The long-planned Rapid Reaction Force (RRF), finally agreed in 1998, came into existence last year.
It is effectively the armed wing of the EU, with 60,000 troops.
It first deployed troops under French command in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003, undertook its first European intervention in Macedonia and is working on plans to succeed Nato peacekeepers' in Bosnia.
Of course the RRF is tied to the project of European economic and political integration. But previously individual European powers have repeatedly carried out their own military interventions, for example the British in diamond-rich Sierra Leone in 2000, and the French in Chad and the Ivory Coast.
Why is the Congo the first area of intervention for the RRF? That country is the world centre for the production of columbite-tantalite (coltan) a mineral vital in the making of computer chips, in addition to tin, copper, diamonds and cassiterite.
For sure, the 'out-of-region' areas the RRF is mainly aimed at are Africa and the Middle East. Germany and France didn't oppose the Iraq war because they are against military interventions per se, but because American control of Iraqi oil meant pushing out European oil companies, sabotaging the plan to denominate Iraqi oil in Euros and lessening European influence throughout the Middle East.
If the American version of 'armed globalisation' attempts to utilise military power for economic and political control, the 'Europeanist' version -albeit stumbling and hesitant so far - attempts to do the same thing.