For a long time, I was a convinced anti-American. For nearly fifteen years, I saw in every U.S. intervention further proof of imperialist arrogance. Then, through solitary reflection, I changed my mind—not out of opportunism or weariness, but because historical logic led me there. This reflection deserves to be shared. Here is how it unfolded.
1. It All Begins with an Energy Surplus
Civilizations do not appear by chance. They emerge where humanity manages to produce more energy (in the form of food calories) than is needed for day-to-day survival.
Hunter-gatherer societies lived in a precarious balance: every calorie spent had to be immediately compensated. Result: little free time, little storage capacity, little specialization. Hierarchies were weak, often temporary, and any attempt at permanent domination was sanctioned by the group (mockery, ostracism, sometimes murder).
The invention of agriculture, 10 to 12,000 years ago, changed everything. For the first time, part of the production could be stored. A surplus appeared. This surplus freed a fraction of the population from daily subsistence work: artisans, priests, warriors, administrators emerged. Society became more complex, denser, more organized, and inevitably more hierarchical.
2. Hierarchy Is Not a Moral Choice, It’s a Technical Consequence
Where there is storable surplus, those who control the granaries, irrigation, or trade routes acquire lasting power. Brute force and strategic intelligence allow an elite to restructure society to their advantage. This is not “good” or “bad” in itself; it’s simply what happens when material conditions permit it.
Civilizations are therefore not intrinsically superior to egalitarian societies. They are more prosperous in terms of material production, accumulated knowledge, and military power, but they pay this price through extreme inequalities, epidemics, large-scale wars, and systematic exploitation.
3. Inter-Group Competition Does the Sorting
In the long run, history is not a moral debate: it’s a Darwinian competition between societal models.
Hierarchical and agricultural societies produce more food, therefore more population, more soldiers and specialized workers, more specialization, better weapons, better logistics, cumulative innovations.
Facing them, egalitarian groups, even if brave and mobile, almost always end up crushed or absorbed. History is full of examples: Rome against Gaul, Europeans against the Americas, sedentary empires against the nomads of the steppes (in the long term, the sedentary prevail).
The model that maximizes collective power prevails, even if it is unequal and coercive internally.
4. Since the 20th Century, Abundance Changes the Game
This is the crucial point that made me shift.
Thanks to the massive exploitation of fossil fuels, industrialization, and globalization, the Western hierarchical system has produced unprecedented abundance. For the first time in history, even the lowest layers of the hierarchy live materially better than kings of the past or egalitarian hunter-gatherers.
Resisting the “strong” (the one who controls this abundance machine) becomes, on a purely rational level, less and less interesting. Early submission minimizes suffering and allows faster access to the benefits of the dominant system.
5. Contemporary Application: The Case of Venezuela
It is this framework that made me accept, without enthusiasm but without opposition in principle, the idea of American intervention in Venezuela.
An authoritarian and incompetent regime has destroyed Latin America’s leading economy despite having the world’s largest oil reserves. The population suffers massively. The United States, the current embodiment of historical “strength,” has the military, logistical, and economic power to overthrow this regime in a few hours and restart oil production.
In the millennial schema I’ve described, prolonged resistance is probably futile, submission (or rapid acceptance of the new hierarchy) minimizes human losses, integration into the dominant system offers, in the long run, access to an abundance that the previous regime was incapable of providing.
I deplore that this creates resentment. I deplore even more that American interventions do not always succeed as well as in Japan or Germany after 1945. But I no longer oppose them on ideological principle: history shows that the most organized and powerful model almost always ends up prevailing and spreading, willingly or not, more prosperity.
Conclusion
This vision is cold, almost mechanistic. It celebrates neither domination nor submission. It simply notes that, since the invention of agriculture, humanity has chosen, without really choosing, the path of hierarchy and organized power, because this path wins vital competitions.
Today, this path produces enough abundance that even the dominated live better than before. Resisting on pure moral principle then becomes a costly luxury, often paid for in useless human lives.
I perfectly understand those who refuse this logic and keep their resentment. I shared it for a long time. But I can no longer ignore it: history, in the very long term, does not reward fierce equality; it rewards efficient organization, even imperfect, even unjust.