A third feature of the Roman empire was rule through puppets, such as Herod, backed up by the empire's pervasive military presence. Some of the most notorious US puppets have been Batista in Cuba, Somoza in Nicaragua, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier in Haiti, Marcos in the Philippines, Diem in Vietnam, and Suharto in Indonesia. More recently, America has installed a puppet regime in Afghanistan and has been trying to do the same in Iraq.

A fourth feature of the Roman empire was that through its imposition of exorbitant taxes, it impoverished the countries it dominated. America's taxation is more indirect, being exercised through the global economy enforced by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. But it impoverishes just as effectively.

An increasing number of commentators have come to speak of "global apartheid," thereby pointing to the fact that the world as a whole reflects the same kind of systemic inequality that characterized South Africa under apartheid. In a 1992 book on global apartheid, Titus Alexander said:

Three-quarters of the land [in apartheid South Africa] and all its natural resources could only be owned by whites, a sixth of the population. The West also has a sixth of the world's population and commands over three-quarters of global resources. . . . [In South Africa,] democracy for a few meant oppression for the many. So it is for most people in the global economy. . . . Free trade and consumer choice for a few means low incomes, long hours and a struggle for subsistence among the many.113

The only difference between the two systems is that---as Gernot Köhler, who coined the term, put it--"global apartheid is even more severe than South African apartheid."114

What is the relevance of this to the nature of the American empire? This question can be answered in three points.
First, global apartheid did not exist three centuries ago but is a product of European colonialism.115

Second, since the end of World War II, when the United States replaced Britain as the leader of the global capitalist economy, it has become increasingly responsible for the state of this economy.

Third, during this period, the gap between the rich and the poor has become much greater. As John Cobb has pointed out: "The disparity in per capita income between the US and the undeveloped nations is estimated as having been about thirteen to one in 1947. In 1989, . . . the disparity had reached around sixty to one."116 According to the Human Development Report of 2005, moreover, the situation is now still worse, with the richest 10 percent of the world's population receiving 54 percent of the world's income and the poorest 40 percent---meaning 2.5 billion people---receiving only 5 percent of the total income.117

The poverty in which billions of God's children on this earth live has dire consequences. Every year, starvation and other poverty-related causes take the lives of about 18 million people, 11 million of whom are children under the age of 5. This means that about 180 million people are dying from poverty-related causes every decade.118

We have rightly considered the Nazi and Stalinist regimes evil, in large part because each one was responsible for the deaths of some 60 million people. But then what term do we use for an empire that is ultimately responsible for three times that many deaths each decade?

Part of the reason we call the Nazi and Stalinist regimes evil, of course, is that many of their victims were killed deliberately. Do American leaders realize what they are doing?

There is evidence that they do. For example, in 1947, George Kennan, who was Director of the Policy Planning Staff in the U.S. State Department, said in a "top secret" memo:

We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. . . . In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.119

A more recent example showing that our leaders know what they are doing is provided by a 1997 document of the US Space Command entitled "Vision for 2020." This document, explaining why the United States needs to dominate space so as to have "full spectrum dominance," says: "The globalization of the world economy . . . will continue with a widening between 'haves' and 'have-nots.'"120 In other words, as the United States and its rich allies become still richer while the rest of the world becomes still poorer, the United States will need to be able to attack from space to keep the have-nots in line. In 2005, the head of the US Space Command said that by putting weapons in space, the United States will have the ability to destroy things "anywhere in the world. . . in 45 minutes."121

As these parallels between Roman and American imperialism show, we can speak of the latter as evil without even bringing 9/11 into the picture. But the awareness that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out to further America's global domination project, and hence increase global apartheid, helps us, as I have suggested elsewhere, to "fully grasp the extent to which this project is propelled by fanaticism based on a deeply perverted value system."122 9/11 can thereby serve as a wake-up call to Christians in America, forcing us to ask how to respond to the realization that we are citizens of the new Rome.

Christians and the New Rome

Any attempt to answer that question would be very long. I will here simply suggest a first step: the formation of an anti-imperial church movement, in which the rejection of America's imperial project is considered a necessary implication of Christian faith. Such a movement would be analogous to the movement of "Confessing Christians" formed in Germany in 1934, a year after the Nazis had come to power. This movement, two leaders of which were theologians Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, opposed the movement known as the "German Christians," which treated Hitler as a new messiah who would bring Germany the greatness it deserved. In their famous Barmen Declaration, the Confessing Christians said that support for National Socialism violated basic principles of the Christian faith. One had to choose either Christian faith or National Socialism. One could not affirm both.123

Later in the century, some Christian bodies decided that rejection of the system of apartheid in South Africa was a necessary implication of Christian faith. In 1977, the Lutheran World Federation declared that although with regard to most political questions, "Christians may have different opinions," the system of apartheid in South Africa was "so perverted and oppressive" that it "constitute[d] a status confessionis"—a confessional situation. The Christian faith, these Lutherans declared, required that "churches would publicly and unequivocally reject the existing apartheid system."124

An analogous question before churches in America today is whether the American empire, with its imperialism and global apartheid, is "so perverted and oppressive" that the public rejection of it should be regarded as an implication of fidelity to God as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, who died on a Roman cross.

End Part V