Strick: Of course the USA wouldn't want Iraq as a 51st state, any more than it wants Mexico or Cuba. Or any more than the USSR wanted Poland or Hungary inside the Soviet Union. Annexation and amalgamation involves all kinds of complications, and just isn't necessary.

And yes, of course Canada and Australia are made up of "permanent territorial gains" in the same way as the United States is, and in the same way as Russia very largely is. And of course the very term "sphere of influence" is the heart of what Empires are all about, and who else but the English would coin a phrase like that? (Unless it was the French, maybe.)

The thing is, there are all sorts of different types of empires, and quite often they don't actually involve direct annexation. Most of the British Empire was made up of protectorates, an analogous term to satellite and more or less what I imagine has been envisaged for Iraq in what might not call itself the American Empire, but pretty clearly bids fair to be one, it seems to me.