Jorge Gálvez | Workers’ Party of Chile
The international order that emerged after the Second World War was formally constructed upon legal principles aimed at limiting the use of force, safeguarding state sovereignty, and promoting peaceful cooperation among nations. However, this normative framework was never neutral; from its inception, it was subordinated to the real balance of forces within the global capitalist system.
In the current phase, marked by the structural crisis of capitalism and the decline of imperial hegemony, that order is no longer even functional as a mask. A qualitatively new figure thus emerges: the “State of Imperial Plunder.” This is a state that not only violates international law, but makes that violation a systematic, public, and openly justified policy.
The “State of Imperial Plunder” is profoundly predatory and converges with forms of transnational state-organized crime.
From Classical Imperialism to the State of Imperial Plunder
Imperialism, as characterized by Lenin, was structured around the export of capital, the domination of markets, and the division of the world among great powers. Throughout much of the twentieth century, this domination was exercised through indirect mechanisms: formal colonialism, neocolonialism, coups d’état, covert wars, and subordinate dictatorships. Even when international law was violated, efforts were made to maintain a legalistic and civilizing rhetoric.
Today, that mediation has disappeared. The State of Imperial Plunder no longer needs to conceal its looting, nor seriously justify its aggression. The appropriation and theft of strategic resources belonging to other nations, the freezing and confiscation of sovereign assets, massive economic sanctions against civilian populations, and direct military threats are openly proclaimed as legitimate instruments of foreign policy.
This new quality is a symptom of imperial crisis. Plunder-imperialism is imperialism weakened in its hegemony, incapable of constructing consensus and reduced to naked coercion. This state no longer seeks unlimited global expansion; rather, as a tactical move, it aims to devastate the resources of its immediate surroundings (the West and its “backyard,” Latin America) in order to entrench itself with the resources obtained through plunder and theft. Its intention is to resist the loss of global hegemony and, once its imperial capacity is restored, to launch a renewed planetary offensive.
The State of Imperial Plunder acts systematically outside international law, disregarding its binding character. It deliberately breaches treaties and multilateral commitments without assuming consequences. It repeatedly violates human rights both within and beyond its borders. It withdraws from or blocks international oversight bodies in order to evade scrutiny and sanctions. It despises the principles of the United Nations Charter, particularly sovereignty, self-determination of peoples, and non-intervention. It replaces law with force, and legality with unilateral imposition.
Despite its loss of hegemony, it remains a state with high institutional, military, and financial capacity—using that capacity to commit crimes on a global scale.
What distinguishes this imperial state is not occasional illegality, but the institutionalization of illegality. Criminal decisions are not made on the margins of power, but at its center. Governments, parliaments, ad hoc courts, armed forces, intelligence agencies, and strategic corporations operate in coordinated fashion.
Illegal economic sanctions function as collective punishment designed to provoke economic collapse, social discontent, and political destabilization. Financial blockades, the confiscation of international reserves, and the appropriation of foreign state-owned enterprises constitute acts of plunder prohibited under international law, yet normalized within imperial discourse.
Here, law ceases to be a limit and becomes a selective weapon: it is applied to enemies and suspended for imperial power.
The Rupture of the International Order
The State of Imperial Plunder does not merely violate the international legal order—it destroys it as a shared reference point. By acting without limits, it undermines the very possibility of a system based on norms and opens the door to a scenario of permanent confrontation, where force replaces law.
This process accelerates the delegitimization of imperialism itself. State plunder exposes the class character of the international order and pushes peoples and states under attack to seek new forms of cooperation, defense, and sovereignty outside frameworks dominated by imperial power.
The State of Imperial Plunder is the political expression of a system in crisis. It is the contemporary face of imperialism when it can no longer persuade, integrate, or hegemonize, and is left only with imposition, plunder, and punishment. Its conduct is not an aberration, but a logical consequence of the current phase of global capitalism in decline.