Dickson C. Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

The USA became the supreme world power after World War 2. That was not chance. US industry, transformed after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 to a war model. War drove a huge innovation beast that delivered American industrial supremacy from 1945 onwards.

Out of the battlefields and bombed out cities came the jet plane, the jeep, tractor, new civil and mechanical engineering ideas, mass production, maritime innovation, and a telecommunications revolution that has led to today’s cell phone technology including the internet and digitization.

US brands led the world after the war ended. That again was not by chance. While bombs and tanks turned, allied lands in Europe to rubble, war never touched the US mainland, giving the country room to breathe, to innovate, and produce the arms the allies in Europe required to prevail over Hitler.

Today, conflict and war continues to drive capital growth and innovation. Ukraine, Iran, and the South China Sea spur capitalists in the armaments industry to innovate and produce to maintain supremacy.

Then there has been a power shift within the capitalist model. The new capitalist owns and adopts digital capital as the path to wealth and power. The traditional capitalist owned factories and outlets. Today’s capitalist uses digitization to pull all the factors of production together for his control and exploitation. Modern digitization drives all aspects of business.

The new capitalist has been termed oligarch or techno-feudalist. Digitization is driving even greater wealth inequality in the West as the Middle class declines.

One reason for anemic economic growth in the west has been the contraction of the middle classes. The mantra is a correct one: the rich save and the middle class spend. A middle class is vital for a growing economy however. It is the key engine of economic growth not the super wealthy.

Then the story of power from the late 1800s has been the growth of American power. That power manifests in the lives of present day humanity through the ubiquitous presence of the mighty US Dollar. The Dollar is the manifest tool of American power.

The Dollar is not simply the world’s Reserve Currency. It is a critical logistics and intelligence asset of the USA. With every transaction, especially the use of digital Dollars as in credit card transactions, and money transfers, US banks know where we are, who we are, what we are doing, what are our habits, and trends to assess.

That is huge hegemonic power.

Movements of cash across borders show up on computer screens in various institutions in the USA that manage the Dollar such as banks and money transfer organizations. This may be a tool in the fight against fraud, terrorism, and international crime. However, producing the Dollar is why the USA is the global hegemon, not its possession of a vast military network.