Bush the elder: military campaign, bad economy, stock boom begins Clinton: stock market boom, more US ownership of world economy Clinton 2: stock market boom, even more US ownership of world economy Bush military campaign, bad economy ??Next new Democrat: new stock market boom, more US ownership of world economy
I have a hard time buying empire as something that transcends American nationalist interests. It seem overvalued stock markets allow American companies to buy up more than their fair share of the global capitalist economies, and then periodic military crises consolidate all the old ways to maintain the American imperium.
Now NATO has a new reason for being. As contradictory as the US-Japan 'alliance' is, the last stock market boom (even as most Asian economies and stock markets tanked) gave American interests unprecedented penetration into Japan's economy (and the rest of Asia as well), and now the current military crisis will pull them closer to the American way of doing things in the military sphere (the Gulf War being a huge tax on Japan).
Maybe it was Clinton who actually gave the world a new order.
Charles Jannuzi