Reflections on the American Empire

It is a fact of history that countries do not become wealthy world powers by just having lofty principles such as freedom, democracy and free elections. 

There are many countries in the world today that also have lofty principles and actually live them out, in some cases even more so than the US, yet they have not, and probably will never attain such high degree of political, economic and military might. 

So clearly there must be more to America’s might than just a simple elementary school explanation of ‘America is great because it is free and democratic.’

The chief aim of the US is simply to dominate the world, period. Everything that the US says and does in the world is done with this ultimate aim in mind. The US government’s rhetoric about human rights, democracy promotion, free elections and fighting “terrorism,” is just convenient and fraudulent PR rhetoric to cover up their economic and military expansionism by hook or crook. 

The US uses these reasons to meddle in, and gain control of other nations, whether through a manufactured color revolution, supporting thugs and calling them freedom fighters (as was the case with Libya and now Syria), or making up fake threats to scare the world into acquiescence, if not outright approval, of another invasion of a nation that poses no threat but has valuable natural resources or other benefits which the US wants but cannot get because the government of that nation refuses to take orders from the empire.

In a TOP SECRET policy document written in February 1948, by the head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, George Kennan, he states:

“We have about 50 per cent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 per cent of its population. … Our real task in the coming period is to maintain this position of disparity. … To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming. … We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford the luxury of altruism. … We should cease to talk about vague, unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we will have to deal in straight power concepts.”

When one considers the path of American foreign policy since the late 19^th century starting with the Spanish-American War until today, the vast amount of America’s power and wealth was built by subjugation and imperial pursuits. To amass and retain the gratuitous amount of political, military and economic power that America has today requires ruthless, clandestine and illegal tactics.

 Overthrowing inconvenient leaders and governments, fixing elections, assassinations, support of brutal dictators and regimes, bribery and threats of military force are just some of the tactics that the United States has employed in pursuit of power and wealth worldwide. If the United States stuck to its founding principles to the letter since 1789 then it would have never become as powerful as it has.

The United States has since the post WWII period managed to fix the world economy to its benefit. By coming out of WWII unscathed and wealthier than ever, the US was in a position to force other countries to go along with its interests. This created a system of client states from which the US was, and is, able to extract goods using dollars which were also made into the sole currency accepted for all oil purchases. Any country that needed to buy oil had to have dollars. 

This created an unnaturally high demand for the dollar, which gained great value. This value enabled the U.S. to reach a high standard of living not found in even the most industrialized Western European nations. It also allowed the US to run up debts multiple times greater than the entire size of its economy.

Another facet of US wealth is the military industrial Complex, which is the biggest weapons dealer on earth and one of the most lucrative industries supporting the American system worldwide. It seems that the U.S. learned more lessons from the Nazis than they care to admit. They might have detested and fought Hitler and his regime but there can be no doubt that the U.S. political and military establishments secretly admired the man’s methods and quickly saw that the armaments/war business is a cash cow. 

From then on, the U.S. has been constantly getting involved in one conflict or another or stirring up problems, creating non-existent threats and provoking unrest worldwide in order to feed the military industrial machine with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. The consequences have been disastrous but have also served to fuel the MIC by creating new threats and contingencies as groups and peoples retaliate against the arrogant and belligerent policies of the U.S.

The U.S. does not tolerate any government, leader or movement which refuses to follow the American free market system. It does not matter whether those movements are progressive, democratic and have the overwhelming support of the populace. The U.S. economy and the unnaturally high living standard requires that as many nations as possible become faithful adherents to the US free market neo liberal model. This turns them into debt slaves by forcing them to borrow money from the IMF and the World Bank in order to meet predefined criteria which most of the time are destructive and cause more economic problems than they fix. 

These economic ‘shock therapy’ policies extort billions of dollars in interest payments on the loans made to client nations. The IMF and World Bank deliberately loan out more money than these countries need so the interest payments will be higher. These interest payments fuel the US economy. It all amounts to a global plantation system where nations are forced to pay tribute to the U.S. It is a tax on the world.

The survival and growth of the U.S. global empire’s wealth and power is the prime motivating factor for U.S. interventions, not to spread democracy and freedom. If the U.S. was motivated by freedom and democracy it could start with its allies such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Pakistan. Anyone who believes that the U.S. would spend hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq and risk the lives of its soldiers for purely altruistic reasons without seeking any material or strategic reward is either a liar or is totally ignorant of world history and geopolitics. 

No empire or world power has ever had the good of the people at heart when they went to war and occupied other nations. Are we to believe that the U.S. is the sole exception to this consistent rule after 5,000 years of history?  

 It is naïve and wrong to think so.