Sean Starrs’s key points : The global nature of US-led capitalism since 1945, and especially since the 1990s, means that some states can extract vast resources from others. GDP tells us where the world’s production of goods and services is geographically concentrated, but in the age of globalization, it does not tell us who owns and therefore profits from it. Global profit share is a more appropriate measure of national economic power, as it encompasses the global profits stemming from production and finance owned abroad, not just within the home territory. The global dominance of Wall Street (financial services in figure two), for example, helps to ensure that the US dollar remains the de facto world currency. The dominance of American tech firms helps to ensure the continued supremacy of the US military, while the dominance of American media helps to ensure that the US state can shape the ideological narrative (including support for US capitalism and imperialism). The United States c...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51