(1) Remember, capitalism socializes production and its "externalities" while profits remain privatized. A few capitalists manage to benefit from the whole fucking mess out there in the Stan. They don't mind paying for Karzais and sepoys, because they are paying them with "other people's money": taxes paid by Americans whose unions are getting busted and whose social programs are being cut; and tributes from vassals of the empire, like Japan, who will also be made to pay for higher fossil fuel costs due to the Anglo-American war on Iraq. Imperialism pays for some capitalists, but, for everyone else, it's a losing proposition, as it has always been the case.
(2) More importantly than (1), while the logic of an individual capitalist may be quarterly cost-benefit calculations, the logic of the capitalist mode of production (whose guardians imperialists are) isn't. Conrad put the logic of imperialism in this way: "Those Englishmen live on illusions which somehow or other help them to get a firm hold of the substance" (_Nostromo_, Part 2 "The Isabels," Chapter 7). Ironically, what is a firm hold at one point may later become a quicksand, for imperialists don't have all the cards necessary to win once and for all. When threatened, imperialists may very well prefer an assertion of class power to profit. In _Nostromo_, rather than allowing the populist rebels to take over the silver mine that he inherited from his father, Charles Gould would prefer to blow up the mine and half the country with it: "'I have enough dynamite stored up at the mountain to send it down crashing into the valley' -- his [Charles's] voice rose a little -- 'to send half Sulaco into the air if I liked.'...'Why, yes,' Charles pronounced, slowly. 'The Gould Concession has struck such deep roots in this country, in this province, in that gorge of the mountains, that nothing but dynamite shall be allowed to dislodge it from there. It's my choice. It's my last card to play'" (_Nostromo_, Part 2 "The Isabels," Chapter 5). -- Yoshie
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