In 1916, Vladimir Lenin wrote a book entitled "Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism." The big idea was that, at this "last and highest" stage, capitalism reached its natural limit: it just could not develop to any higher stage and was fated to give way to a radically different social formation called socialism, and eventually to communism. Then ­ hey presto ­ you have an end of history, an announcement that Lenin made long before Francis Fukuyama.

Actually, Fukuyama is simply the most successful, in PR terms, but by no means the first or even second, after Lenin, philosopher to have announced an end of history. Long before Lenin or Fukuyama, a philosopher called Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, now mostly referred to as "old man Hegel," observing Napoleon destroy the old state and social institutions of Europe, also announced, practically in so many words, the end of the ideological evolution of the human species.

It is easy to see that these announcements of the end of history by all three philosophers occurred in situations when certain societal structures and institutions were indeed coming to an end, and that rather explosively. Hegel's postulation was pegged to the end of the ancien régime; Lenin's was made a year before the end of a three-hundred-year-old monarchy in Russia, at the height of an imperialist war also known as the Great War; and Fukuyama's famous, some say notorious, article was published in 1989, at the time when the Soviet Union was going to the dogs at a rapid and increasingly accelerating pace (his book on the subject appeared in 1992, when the USSR was no more).

Seen in this light, all three predictions seem to me to be merely exaggerations or extrapolations of the observable to that which lies beyond the visible horizon ­ a perfectly legitimate and more or less innocent occupation for folks who like to call themselves thinkers; that is, people who, for want of better things to do, like to play with ideas.

The concept that intrigues me most these days is that of imperialism, though by no means in a Leninist framework; definitely not. As we noticed, end-of-history announcements at breaking points in history are accompanied by visible upsurges in military activities ­ wars, revolutions, or preparations for war known as the arms race. What is called the Cold War was no exception to the rule, as it continually broke out in very hot wars, as in Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, to name just a few. These might be called wars by proxy, as they never came to a military conflict between the two competing superpowers, due to the workings of the Mutually Assured Destruction factor.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and of the "socialist camp," which represented one of the two conflicting imperialist systems, only the other world imperialist system, that of the USA and its allies, remained. One would expect a sort of assuaging of imperialist tendencies ­ of reliance on military strength, aggression or threat of aggression in international relations. This did indeed take place: "defense" expenditures (the word "defense" is an obvious euphemism for war preparations, hence the quotes) dropped by a whole quarter ­ but for how brief a period! Just between 1990 and 1995.

Then these expenditures began to climb steeply. At present, they are higher than at the time of the Cold War, and are growing at a faster rate than in those far from blessed years. Recently published findings of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for the year 2006, SIPRI Yearbook 2006, make hair-raising reading.

The statistics published in the yearbook show clearly something that we have known all along, even without the book ­ who is the biggest imperialist on this globe; only we now know it to the last decimal. The United States spent $528 billion last year for "defense" purposes ­ practically half (46 percent) of what the entire planet spends on such things. Distant also-rans are the UK, France, China, and Japan ­ in that order. Russia comes a modest sixth, with $34.7 billion. US allies in NATO account for 20 percent of the world expenditure. Add this to the United States' 46 percent, and you get a whopping 66 percent of military expenditure as against Russia's puny four percent. And still there are people ­ ladies and gentlemen of the Western press and high officials, too ­ who have the gall to call Russia under Putin "imperialist." One might take this as a particularly perverted instance of black humor, if the accusers weren't so damn sincere.

The SIPRI yearbook is a gold mine of fascinating information, but rather than indulge in quoting its endless array of figures, I would like to stick to the main theme of these notes and try to answer this simple question: What is this all in aid of? OK, we have witnessed end-of-history announcements coinciding in time with world-historical ruptures and upsurges of militarism. At present we have a clearly observable, unheard-of upsurge in imperialist activities and preparations ­ what is in store for us? What kind of end of history? What global ruptures?

Now, socialism is dead, at least in Russia ­ it is safe in Sweden, France, Germany, and other happy-happy European lands. Communism is even deader: it is dying out in Russia with every passing year, along with people who were Party card holders for thirty years and more. If you point to China as a communist state, you just can't be serious: I guess it would take a nuclear war to disrupt China's glacier-like movement towards a more or less liberal democracy and a market that is about as capitalist as any developed country's. No societal upheavals in this area.

Islamist terrorism, now. It is a threat, whether we have a conflict of civilizations or something on a more modest scale. But is half a trillion dollars' worth of military hardware a likely tool to deal with this threat? Afghanistan and Iraq have clearly shown ­ no, it is not. You simply cannot bomb terrorists out of existence even where you find (or, as in Iraq, convince the nation that you've found) concentrations of them ­ you simply provoke more terrorist activities (again, as in Iraq, or as in Somalia). And as for the most dangerous forms of terrorism, those that resort to urban guerrilla warfare, your military might ­ Stealth bombers at a billion apiece, aircraft carriers, military bases all over the world, and the like ­ are simply irrelevant. You can't bomb London out of existence because some enthusiasts blew up explosives on the Tube or on a bus.

One last ideological shibboleth is "rogue states," of which there are just two left, communist North Korea and Shiite Iran, whose one common ideological sin is their dislike of America. Famine-ridden North Korea is finally ready to give up its nuclear program in exchange for an easing of its financial plight (today's paper mentions $25 million arriving in North Korea via the Russian Dalkombank).

Open aggression against Iran is, of course, an option "on the (US) table," but it may well mark the beginning of the end for the world's biggest imperialist, for strictly economic reasons, if not any other. For one thing, oil prices would go through the roof ­ Iran's short- and medium-range missiles have the capacity to plug the Persian Gulf bottleneck. For another, the cost of war in Iraq is already making a hefty contribution to America's budget deficit, which simply cannot grow indefinitely. Then there is, or will be, the matter of human losses, which are sure to be an order of magnitude higher than in Iraq; and other, highly unpleasant retaliation measures that Iran promises to resort to.

I believe, though, that a military end to the militarism of a world empire is not the most likely end-of-history resolution this time round. The US can perhaps survive a war with Iran, its world domination only slightly dented. Even combating Islamist terrorism shows, however, that in this day and age military prowess, while remaining effective for limited purposes, like toppling Saddam Hussein and provoking Sunni­Shiite or Kosovar­Serb massacres, is becoming progressively irrelevant.

The overriding factor determining the present stage in history is a growing interdependence of different parts of the world known as globalization, a process in which the United States itself is playing first fiddle. Consider the results of the recent Eleventh International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg. Before the forum, tentative assessments of the value of deals to be struck there by different corporations hovered over the figure $3 billion. In actual fact contracts to the tune of $13.5 billion were signed ­ a clear indication that the world's biggest capitalists are not overly impressed by the media and political squabbles between Moscow, Washington and London, or the splitting of ideological hairs regarding "sovereign democracy," "cold peace," "cold war," and the like. Individuals, and nations, want to live, and they want to live well. Europe cannot live well without Russian gas, and no NMD will change this fact of life.

It appears that Lenin said more than he thought he did when he spoke of imperialism as the last stage in the development of ­ no, not just of capitalism, but of world history. This fresh end of history is perhaps just round the corner ­ in historical terms, of course; only we are too intimidated by the pervasive imperialism of today to be aware of, or hope for, such a desirable end.