. @dbessner, no offense, but a "Leninist vanguard" of mini-AOCs (narcissistic radical liberal PMC cultists) sounds like a veritable nightmare. It is something with no relation to "the left" insofar as the term denotes "proletarian".

Your conversation with @BungaCast addresses interesting topics. You say that focusing on US state power might be key to addressing it, & note the manifold crimes & inequities of Empire.

Unfortunately your solution to the problem is fanciful.

If Berniecrats were suddenly in control of the US (as you hope), & if they decided to "dismantle/obstruct the empire" from the inside with the aim of replacing it with an order that is "democratized" internationally, with what tangiable power could they insitute this new order?

A vanguard of antiimperialists accomplishing a cession of US state power would logically be unable to then dictate anything better to the world, having cast themselves into obsolescence—unless you imagine that your tame ideological cadres will infiltrate all major states at once!

The possibility of a global infiltration is next-to absent. This is especially the case considering you "reject revolution" (while also endorsing a gradualist ideological Leninism?!) & focus your attention on electoral politics ("when AOC wins"), which don't exist in many powers.

So discounting the possibility of a peaceful, legal global infiltration of governments by anti-imperialist Berniecrats, we are left with the prospect of the US unilaterally dismantling it's superpower status.

There are practical domestic impediments to doing that...

...namely the armed forces and intelligence agencies - correctly recognizing that they hold the tangible destructive power the state is trying to dispose of, & seeing the palpable fecklessness of the Berniecrats - would act to remove the Berniecrats, & they'd have the power to.

You call yourself a "Marxist" but imagine the bourgeois state will irrationally act against the interests of its master, [domestic] capital, which you also admit is the beneficiary of empire? & why? Not due to huge concerted pressure from workers, but a cadre of AOCs? Hilarious!

While the bourgeoisie controls society unchallenged (you imply this will continue), its state will - by necessity - be manned & led by those who serve its interests!

Unfortunately, @dbessner, your scenario ignores the reality of power, & aggrandizes the false-idol of ideology.

But, again - to be charitable - I will ignore the overwhelming domestic institutional & class impediments to the US state willingly renouncing its global hegemony in the absence of changes to class power or external factors, and entertain the consequences of this occurring.

After the US empire's self-demolition, foreign national elites and the states they control that retain the tangible power the US gave up would speedily inherit the role the US Empire once played for the global capitalist elite.

The geopolitical vacuum left by the curtailment of US military power while global capitalism and other still-potent states persist, and in the absence of global political integration, would likely lead to cataclysmic war between weaker powers vying to occupy the US's former role.

Whether the new non-US-centered global capitalist empire is the last one standing after World War 3, an unchallenged sucessor, or an institutional amalgam of global elites, any domestic gains accrued by Berniecrats would be erased as the US became a vassal to the new hegemon(s).

While a future capitalist empire emanating from outside the US might play a similar function as the US one now vis a vis capital, we have no reason to expect it would fulfill this role with any less violence or cruelty than the US does currently or would if it remained hegemon.

Whether the Post-US Empire is an EU-type multinational institution or an existing competitor to the US, like China, how can its global reign be expected to be any more "just, equitable or peaceful" than the current order?

It is possible the heir would be worse than the father.

So I think the vision Daniel presents in the @BungaCast ep is unviable, since it doesn't address the inevitability of a global hegemon, the interests of foreign elites in the case of US decline, & domestic forces & interests that would preclude the US Empire's self-dismantlement.

Various critics have noted the current US/Western left's tendency to self-flagellate re identitarian "privilege" or the nation's "original sin", and so on, instead of accepting *the burden*, the responsibility that power - & thus the project of gaining it - always must entail.

I think various streams of US left antiimperialism—like the one Daniel is part of, but also antiinstitutional ones like @MaxBlumenthal's, & others—mirror the phenomenon of "woke" self-flagellation.

Their adherents seem animated by moral outrage at the "crimes" of their state...

Their "solution" to the problem of those "crimes" is to hope for the disempowerment their state, so it is unable to act as it does, and/or to hope to stop the objectionable actions through the institutions of their state.

Both solutions are blind to power:

the 1st to geopolitical power & class interests abroad that would replicate the US Empire's behavior

the 2nd to domestic political power - how the bourgeoisie's control over the capitalist state precludes using it against capital's interests.

To end, imperialism isn't unique to the US: ending US Empire won't end it. What might is global political integration (without which communism is impossible, or, if not, which may result from it) that—ironically—may be the product of an empire extending its control universally.

"Solving US Empire" won't "solve capitalism".

"Solving capitalism", though, might "solve empire" in general!

. @BMStudebaker has a cogent materialist critique of left antiimperialism. I don't agreed with all of his prescriptions or interpretations, but find his view generally convincing. It could be productive for leftists concerned with imperialism or f-pol generally to engage this POV.