By James Petras
Empires are not easy to sustain given the multiple enemies that they provoke:  at the international level (imperial rivals and emerging new powers), at the national level (national resistance movements, unreliable clients and untrustworthy 'Sepoy' armies) and at the local level (boycotts, sabotage and strikes). Imperial difficulties are multiplied when an empire is in economic decline, (loss of market shares with growing debt), facing domestic unrest as the economic costs to the taxpayers exceed the returns by a substantial margin; and when the political elite is internally divided between 'militarists' and 'free market' advocates.