By Daniel Bessner

The September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, as the saying goes, “changed everything.” After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the global American empire, created in the 1940s to combat communism, was left without a raison d’être. While foreign policymakers spent the 1990s searching for one, the best they could come up with — use the military power of the United States to stop humanitarian abuses abroad — was quixotic at best, catastrophic at worst. For a time, the empire lost its juice.

The attacks changed all that. After 9/11, the United States identified a new global mission: fight “jihadist terrorism” wherever it might be found. We all know how that turned out. The United States lurched from disaster to disaster, killing and deracinating millions of people abroad. And at home, the so-called global war on terror (GWOT) engendered police militarization, polarization, and cynicism.

Today few Americans deny that we live in an empire. But why has there been so little opposition to it?

Our new issue, “The New Empire,” argues that under Donald Trump, US imperialism is making itself felt in its most blatant and dangerous forms. Alongside tariffs, trade wars, and “America First” rhetoric, Trump’s intensification of military and economic coercion has been catastrophic.

Beyond Trump, we ask why the erosion of US dominance has generated more violence rather than less, why militarism remains so durable at home, and which institutions still sustain American power. We examine NATO, the global role of the dollar, the arms industry, and the prospects for a renewed left internationalism capable of confronting empire and capital alike.

“The New Empire” is for socialists confronting these questions and the urgent need to challenge US power in all its military, political, and economic forms.

The US Federal Reserve appointed a new chair earlier this year. Kevin Warsh replaced Jerome Powell, who had been under constant fire from the Trump administration. For many, Warsh’s appointment represented a turn toward the overt politicization of monetary policy.

Is the age of central bank independence coming to an end? And is it something that the Left should mourn or celebrate? Martijn Konings, author of The Bailout State: Why Governments Rescue Banks, Not People, joins Long Reads to discuss the state of central banking.

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