I believe you misunderstood how I use the term empire and attributed that to an ideology I don't hold.

Just as the EU is a new kind of empire of shared sovereignty, the US has an empire based on voluntary alliance networks. You can argue that this is an abuse of the term empire and for a definition of the term empire that restricts its use to those exercising direct rule or sovereignty. I prefer a more elastic definition that illuminates how China and Russia are doomed to fail at empire building due to a failure to adapt to the hybrid soft-hard power mixed American model. In direct rulie sovereignty terms, it's as asset light as Airbnb is compared to hotels.