<P> It used to be that only the critics of American foreign policy referred to the American empire...In the past three or four years (2001 - 2004), however, a growing number of commentators have begun to use the term American empire less pejoratively, if still ambivalently, and in some cases with genuine enthusiasm . </P> <P> US historians have generally considered the late 19th century imperialist urge as an aberration in an otherwise smooth democratic trajectory...Yet a century later, as the US empire engages in a new period of global expansion, Rome is once more a distant but essential mirror for American elites...Now, with military mobilisation on an exceptional scale after September 2001, the United States is openly affirming and parading its imperial power . For the first time since the 1890s, the naked display of force is backed by explicitly imperialist discourse . </P> <P> In the book "Empire", Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue that "the decline of Empire has begun". Hardt says the Iraq War is a classically imperialist war, and is the last gasp of a doomed strategy . They expand on this, claiming that in the new era of imperialism, the classical imperialists retain a colonizing power of sorts, but the strategy shifts from military occupation of economies based on physical goods to a networked biopower based on an informational and affective economies . They go on to say that the U.S. is central to the development of this new regime of international power and sovereignty, termed "Empire", but that it is decentralized and global, and not ruled by one sovereign state: "the United States does indeed occupy a privileged position in Empire, but this privilege derives not from its similarities to the old European imperialist powers, but from its differences ." Hardt and Negri draw on the theories of Spinoza, Foucault, Deleuze and Italian autonomist Marxists . </P> <P> Geographer David Harvey says there has emerged a new type of imperialism due to geographical distinctions as well as unequal rates of development . He says there has emerged three new global economic and political blocs: the United States, the European Union and Asia centered on China and Russia . He says there are tensions between the three major blocs over resources and economic power, citing the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the motive of which, he argues, was to prevent rival blocs from controlling oil . Furthermore, Harvey argues that there can arise conflict within the major blocs between business interests and the politicians due to their sometimes incongruent economic interests . Politicians live in geographically fixed locations and are, in the U.S. and Europe, accountable to an electorate . The' new' imperialism, then, has led to an alignment of the interests of capitalists and politicians in order to prevent the rise and expansion of possible economic and political rivals from challenging America's dominance . </P>

With such a late entry into the conflict what role was the u.s. able to play