The Rent-Seeking Empire and the Great Split

There is a core deception at the heart of the modern Western worldview, a story told so often it has become the wallpaper of our geopolitical reality. It is the story of Pax Americana.

The Narrative: The Benevolent Policeman

The official story goes like this: For 80 years, the United States has acted as the benevolent policeman of the world. It built a massive navy to keep the sea lanes open for everyone. It created international institutions to prevent chaos. It spent its blood and treasure to defend freedom and maintain stability. This era, we are told, was a gift—a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity provided by American generosity.

The Reality: The Global Landlord

The reality, visible from the perspective of the Global South (the “Split” perspective), is different. The United States did not police the world out of charity. It policed the world to enforce the Dollar Standard and to ensure that resources—oil, minerals, labor—flowed cheaply and reliably from the South to the West.

It wasn’t a public service; it was Rent-Seeking.

The “protection” provided by the US military was effectively a protection racket. Countries paid for this security by holding US debt, trading in US dollars (allowing the US to print money for free), and suppressing their own economic sovereignty to fit into Western supply chains. The “Rules-Based Order” was the lease agreement, and the US was the landlord.

The “Wasted 80 Years” Myth

Today, we see a shift in rhetoric. As the Global South (led by powers like India and China) rises and begins to trade on its own terms, the American narrative is changing. We hear complaints that the US “wasted 80 years” defending “ungrateful” nations who are now turning against it. Isolationism is rising, framed as “we are tired of helping you.”

This is a face-saving lie. The Anglosphere is not retreating because it is tired of helping. It is retreating because it can no longer enforce the rent.

The “Split” we are witnessing—the decoupling of economies, the rise of BRICS, the shift to local currencies—is simply the tenants refusing to pay the landlord anymore. The cost of enforcement has become too high, and the tenants have become too strong.

The Moral Question

When we look back at the last century, we must ask the uncomfortable moral question: “Did they do right?”

If you ask a beneficiary of the umbrella (a Western European, a Japanese industrialist): Yes. The system worked for them.
If you ask a victim of the enforcement (a Vietnamese, an Iraqi, a Chilean, an Iranian): No.

The “betrayal” detailed in this book is not just about history; it is about this specific moment of collapse. The Anglosphere promised a “Rules-Based Order,” but that order was only ever a mechanism for extraction. Now that the rules no longer guarantee their dominance (as seen in the rise of competitors they can’t simply buy or bomb), they are the first to break them. From weaponizing the global financial system to imposing arbitrary sanctions, the “policeman” has revealed himself to be just another player—one who flips the board when he starts losing the game.

Conclusion

The chaos we see today is not the end of “order.” It is the messy, painful, but necessary end of a global rent-seeking scheme. The world is moving from a managed plantation to a wild, open ecosystem. It is dangerous, yes. But for the first time in centuries, the rent is not due.