A highly appreciated and devoted reader commented on yesterday’s post that “capitalism and imperialism are not, at least to me, mutually exclusive and definitely not antithetical. A capitalist country can also be imperialist.”

In observable government operations, we fundamentally agree. Regardless of words in its name, geography and population define a country. Countries adapt aspects of one or more systems to govern themselves and their interactions with other countries. When countries do interact, they use components of imperialism and capitalism. It’s difficult to find a country that has acted constantly through history as purely capitalistic or completely imperialistic.

Widely ranging use, misuse, and abuse of the labels “imperialism” and “capitalism” raise our challenge of describing how we want our own and expect other countries to act. If we start with a review of imperialism and capitalism’s fundamental principles, we can open perspectives that help us appreciate long term implications of choices we make today.

Foundationally, capitalism codifies and adopts laws to allocate global resources, and imperialism conquers and occupies lands to allocate global resources.

To tilt this world a little more towards peace, Americans should double down on strengthening systems that, through laws, protect individuals’ rights around the world.