Originally written in 2003 and expanded upon in 2015 and posted on Transcend Media Service’s, TMS, on September 26, 2022. 1. Definitions and Hypotheses: An Overview Definition: An empire is a transborder Center-Periphery system, in macro-space and in macro-time, with a culture legitimizing a structure of unequal exchange between center and periphery: Empires have different profiles. The US Empire has a complete configuration, articulated in a statement by a Pentagon planner: “The de facto role of the United States Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing”.[1] In other words, direct violence to protect structural violence legitimized by cultural violence.[2] The Center is continental USA and the Periphery much of the world. Like any system it has a life-cycle reminiscent of an organism, with conception, gestation, birth, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, senescence and death. Seeded by the...