Niall Ferguson on why the end of America’s empire won’t be peaceful
What many people don&#x27;t realise is that the United States adopted and follows the old British empire&#x27;s &quot;divide and rule&quot; policy. The aim of the &quot;divide and rule&quot; policy is to sow discord among your opponents and ensure that they don&#x27;t unite and find a common cause against you.<p>We indians are quite familiar with it, as it was most successfully used by the British against India - they exaggerated and nursed the fears and distrust in the Hindu and muslim community to divide us religiously (mostly in the north), they used the anger of the lower caste against the upper caste to create a political schism between them in south india, they used bribes and the fear of the masses with rich former rulers to ensure they wouldn&#x27;t support the growing mass political movement demanding more rights and ultimately freedom, and so on. While the leaders of the Indian National Congress, especially Gandhi, did manage to politically unite them, there were political failures too that ultimately lead to partition of India and the formation of muslim Pakistan and secular India amidst one of the most horrible communal violence in the history of the sub-continent whose scars still haven&#x27;t healed fully (which right-wing politicians in both India and Pakistan continue to try and exploit even today).<p>The United States refined the &quot;divide and rule&quot; policy and took it one step further - they also started to use it to train and improve their military.<p>Thus, they deliberately create conflict in every part of the world, and feed and exploit historical feuds to ensure that peace eludes these region and that the conflict ensures the countries involved don&#x27;t settle their difference and work together (which can possibly mean against US interests). Towards this goal, they prefer to support dictators and despot, who support US goals, over democratic leaders who care more about their own nation. And if a conflict could be made worse, and lead to military conflict, the US did so and it provided a fertile ground to test new military munitions and provide experience to the new recruits (battle experience is a must to have a powerful military).<p>Thus, the US (and its western allies) have continued to exploit and fuel the divisions and conflict between<p>- Russia against NATO Europe, Pakistan against India, India against China, Japan against China, Korea against Japan, Saudi Arabia against Iran, Israel against the Middle East. South America and Africa also have seen a lot of violent conflicts, created by the US and the British respectively.<p>Ofcourse, I am not ignoring the fact that some of the conflicts weren&#x27;t started by the US (while some are actually a continuation of the British empires policy), even if it sought to exploit them. Nor am I naive enough to believe that another world power would do things differently.<p>One other thing I find very interesting, historically, is that the rise of the US coincides with the move of the British to reign in corporates, like the East India Company (who had their own private army matching that of the British empire). Many businessmen thus sought to counter the might of the British monarchy, and they found an alternative in the US, which kind of explains why the US is so corporate friendly and something we need to also watch in trepidation - the US is already experimenting with privatising the Army (private mercenary contractors were hired in Middle-East during the gulf war, and in Afghanistan). After managing to privatise spying and building the largest surveillance network in the world, will the BigTech corporate from the US also succeed in getting their own private Army in the future? To me, that seems like the most likely future of the &quot;US empire&quot;.