An "empire" can be defined as a political system of unilateral arbitrariness that acts without legal accountability in a tyrannical rule over populations. The United States is not an "empire" nor does it aspire to be in the sense of expanding an unbridled domination of populations beyond its own borders or even the populations within its own borders. The United States does, however, wish to maintain a military superiority over other nations through superior weaponry and the strategic placement of military resources throughout the world. This is not done so much to require nations to submit to America's will, but rather to ensure that actions that seriously threaten America's security cannot and will not succeed. Such a military strategy, however, has become more complicated by enemies who are not embodied in identified political states but operate in a loose network of like-minded warriors (al Qaeda) who mount attacks through secret cells that aspire to inflict massive casualties on their enemies. The presence of such a threat has required a response beyond traditional military deployment and foreign policies designed to deter and counter state military threats. Security measures against such a threat involve a domestic and international network of intelligence and surveillance designed to identify actual and potential cell members who can be taken into custody and incapacitated prior to a planned attack. Such preemptive military and surveillance tactics have led to perceptions that America aspires to be an empire. 66 references