Hegemony Of American Imperialism

  N M Sundaram

WHEN we talk of imperialism in the present times we refer principally to US imperialism. It is emboldened to embark on newer and more than ever brazen escapades through demanding postures in trade and investments, pressure of diplomacy, subversion through its secret service agencies like the CIA and aggressive deployment of its armed forces to intimidate and to fight hegemonic and destructive wars. America finds all these measures equally effective for its dubious purposes and no delicacies of ethical considerations like sovereignty of nations, democratic rights, human values and civilisational norms are allowed to stand in the way.

Every one of its actions projected in the name of national security interests or foreign policy considerations – the so-called strategic interests – exposes America as the most vicious and brutal power in human history.

Human history is full of instances of empires ruling tall, magnificent and brutal but in the end falling asunder by the very weight of their overreaching ambitions and callous disregard of others’ interests. In the course of their infamous existence, the injustices and inhumanity that befell the hapless countries and people subjugated by these empires are legion. The disrepute they brought upon human civilisation that outweighs whatever achievements they could boast of, remain etched as bitter memories in the pages of human history and conscience. These empires always tried to hide their inglorious deeds through their hired hacks behind the veneer of civilising influence, wealth and glories achieved. They talked of “the white man’s burden” and of “savage wars of peace” as Rudyard Kipling wrote unabashedly eulogising the British Empire.

IMPERIAL OVERSTRETCH

This is true of all empires of aggrandisement, wealth, power and brutality, be it of the Romans in antiquity, or of Spain around 1600 or Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries; they all fell by the way side of history ingloriously. What could be the reason for this? Deeply viewed, it would become apparent that profound shifts in the world’s productive balances when the empire cannot any more sustain its commitments, economically and militarily made long time earlier, have contributed to this fall, among others.

The fell weapon of the empire’s destruction, more than any superior material or military might is the complacency that nothing could go wrong daring it to overreach much beyond its capacity to sustain over a period. Historians call this phenomenon “imperial overstretch” and have chronicled its path diligently. Yet new empires are born and follow the beaten path to self-destruction: the imperial overstretch! 

“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

 And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave’

 Awaits alike the inevitable hour;

 The paths of glory lead but to the grave.” 

                                       -Thomas Gray in his Elegy

In the present times, America can be said to be in such a position: it is now on the brink of this ‘imperial overstretch’ and it is the least aware of it, cocky as it is with conceit and arrogance of power.

The US at present is the only super power and is in its own class, economically and militarily. But it must sooner or later, confront the major tests that have challenged the longevity of the preeminence of imperial powers in the past. The question is whether America can continue to preserve economic and technological bases of its power from erosion in the face of constantly shifting patterns of global production and trade. The possible challenges are already visible. The falling value of its currency and its burgeoning deficits are instances in point as is its huge and increasing debt. The cost of Iraq war alone has reached a staggering 300 billion dollar and its armed forces are stretched. And the occupation has led to a quagmire. The ignominious defeat in Vietnam comes back to haunt the memory after 30 years. The talk of military draft, always unpopular with people, is being mutely heard. What more it will cost is anybody’s guess. In the meantime the Pentagon is asking for appropriations for manufacture and deployment of defensive and offensive space weapons besides for upgradation of conventional weapons. All this is happening when American industries are struggling and workers are bearing the brunt of the burden through loss of jobs and even social security.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the US must face the profound fact that the aggregate of its global interests and obligations are already becoming larger than the country’s capacity to defend them all simultaneously. Nations project their military powers in accordance with what their economic strength would permit. After all they involve their military prowess in defence of their broad economic interests. But what happens when the cost of involving that military power becomes more than what the richest of economies could afford? At any rate this cannot go on for an indefinite period. Besides, development of new technologies and rising of new centres of production could shift the balance of economic power. As already said, history of empires is replete with such experiences. In other words, America’s imperial overstretch is already showing in its seams. Hence, its increasing bellicosity and brazenness of its actions. This does not however mean that American imperialism does not have the resilience in the interim term to try and stave off the oncoming challenges. But the question again is: for how long?

MASS IGNORANCE

The paradox of the situation as well as the tragedy is that the American people, with exceptions of course are mostly ignorant of the situation. American ruling establishment somehow succeeded in creating an illusion of its invincibility. Simultaneously, it has also projected the notion of its being a ‘soft’ or a ’benign’ power utilising its material and military superiority only for the most just and moral causes. The real tragedy is, most Americans believe in this chimera. There are the gullible in other countries too. At any rate there are the drumbeaters infiltrated among the power circles, the media and the assortment of ‘experts’ to do the dirty job.

Americans as the general perception goes are educated by and large – at least more sections of them than the case with developing countries like India. That should mean they would be having better understanding of things that are being done in their name. But paradoxically that is not true. Their awareness and therefore understanding of their country’s role around the world is grossly restricted. Other shining attributes apart, their ignorance when it comes to political issues affecting the people or foreign policy issues affecting the rest of the world is appalling. This might sound harsh judgment but nevertheless is true. Subject to this frailty, Americans on the average are good people, as good as any other. Obviously we are talking of the generality of Americans and not those who make it their business to know and understand things objectively, whose number happily is substantially large.

American imperialism’s strength – or weakness as one would like to view it – therefore, is also derived from this cultivated mass ignorance and not just from its economic and military might. This has been achieved by the elite’s ideological control over the educational system and the powerful media, which are also stretching their tentacles all around the globe.

WHY THE HATRED

So when we talk of American imperialism’s hegemony, we do not confine it to the political, economic (like investments and trade) and military aspects alone. Though these are the major instrumentalities, there are others ideologically attuned like hegemony over all aspects of culture – the whole spectrum of it like education, media, literature, music, dance, cinema, food, restaurants, clothes, the whole range of fashion and all its accessories and trappings, behavioral pattern etc. Add to this infiltration of the bureaucracy and other critical positions in the government besides the so-called intelligentsia, the picture is complete.

Every one of these aspects deserves separate and extensive treatment to fully understand the octopus-like hold US imperialism wields on countries and people. However, we are for the present dealing only with its overt and covert armed interventions.

When 9/11 attacks took place, most American’s could not understand why their country should be subjected to such hatred. “Why do they hate us?” the average American asked incredulously. President Bush himself grossly aggravated this irrational sentiment. He said soon after the attack: “they hate us and our freedoms.” Of all the people he ought to know what perfidy American imperialism has played in the Middle-East and other parts of the globe, what destruction – human and material – has been inflicted on the hapless people in the countries there and elsewhere in the world. But he chooses to play on the ignorance of the American people about the injustice and inhumanity perpetrated in their name, in pursuit of its hegemonic ambitions, strategic control over areas, regimes and people and most of all precious resources.

In the same vein he also declared: “It’s war” without even knowing who the enemy was! Or had he already decided that it was Saddam Hussien and Iraq? And, that without even any credible piece of evidence!

As already said, the American ruling establishment has been successful in mobilising public opinion in favour of its international role by cultivating the myth of its being a ‘soft’ or a ‘benign’ power with a divine ordained role often described as ‘manifest destiny’. According to this notion, the nation being born in revolt against the injustices of imperialism and class exploitation of the old world – of the European powers, cannot but have the best of intentions towards others. The notion of ‘manifest destiny’ postulates that only America through the superiority of its values, institutions and culture has the moral fibre and the ordination to interfere in other lands in a way that was different from the brutalities and sheer inhumanity of traditional imperial societies. It is as if the United States became “the indispensable nation” stumbling into leadership of the capitalist world and therefore of the entire world. In other words, it pretends that its intervention and domination are by invitation. Andrew Bacevich in his book ‘American Empire’ (2002) that exposes America’s pretentious foreign policy writes: “in practice, the myth of the ‘reluctant superpower’ – Americans asserting themselves only under duress and then always for the noblest purpose – reigns today as the master narrative explaining (and justifying) the nation’s exercise of global power.”

This sham of self-righteousness is time and again illustrated by the pronouncement of its leaders, particularly of the present incumbent to the presidency, George W Bush. President Bush has elevated his rhetoric to one of evangelical zeal, in letter and spirit. For example in his speech on the occasion of his second inauguration, he used the words liberty and freedom as many as 42 times as if none else other than America had the courage and moral competence to espouse these values. This accompanied by the sanctimonious tenor of his rendition with Biblical anecdotes, made it clear that he was stretching this doctrine of manifest destiny a little too obviously. And, this is the leader who proclaims that he would fight religious fanaticism and zealotry relentlessly and boldly in the name of human values, democracy and freedom!

COLLABORATION WITH TYRANTS

History has chronicled imperialism acting in concert with political despots, religious fanatics and quislings in its game of securing hegemonic control over other countries and their natural resources. The Middle-East history itself is replete with instances of American imperialism cozying up with ruling tyrants and religious zealots in order to maintain their strategic positions during the cold war and control over precious resources, particularly oil. In his book ‘Sleeping with the Devil’ (2003) former CIA operative Robert Baer describes this cozy relationship the power group in the US administration had struck with the corrupt, fundamentalist and incredibly oppressive regime of al-Sa’ud. His exposure reveals that the US business and military interests and the security of the Saudi regime met common ground despite the knowledge that the latter was funding the Madrassas that taught the Saudi youth an extreme and militant cult of the Wahhabi sect of Islam and directly and indirectly funded and armed Islamist fundamentalist and terrorist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Baer reveals that America being dependent on Saudi oil and petrodollars, deliberately turned a blind eye to what was happening and often was seen actively helping. He also writes that every leader from George Bush Sr. to Henry Kissinger, Al Gore to Dick Cheney “has stuck a hand in the Saudi cookie jar.” And, private investment groups like ‘The Carlyle Group’ and leading American corporations including Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Halliburton and Kellogg Brown & Root lined up to do business with the Saudis, despite the knowledge that much of the profit generated got siphoned of in bribes to the Saudi Royal family and through them to the terrorist organisations including al-Qaeda as protection money. The Saudis are known to reward their benefactors lavishly. Both the Republicans and Democrats are beneficiaries of the Saudi largesse.

In retrospect, the world knows that the war of occupation against Iraq has nothing to do with the allegation of its harbouring terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, nuclear programme and above all bringing about ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ to the Iraqis. It has no legs to stand on even as a retributory action for the 9/11 attacks. The reports that have since been published officially by the US as well as the UK, expose the falsehood perpetrated. What is more glaring and bizarre is the fact that all the investigations point an accusing finger at the Bush administration itself and its hangers on, for ignoring intelligence reports and chasing a red herring of its own making falsely pointing to Iraq and Saddam Hussein as the culprits.

America is known to have a sordid record of foisting and sustaining in power the worst despots and dictators in history. But still strangely, it keeps on projecting itself as the crusader for freedom and democracy – as president Bush is fond of saying: “freedom as we know it”. Successive American Presidents had no difficulty in maintaining this dubious position. Referring to one of the worst dictators of history Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, president Franklin Roosevelt is reported to have commented: “He is a son of a bitch alright, but he is our son of a bitch”; that is all the justification needed!

ANTI-COMMUNIST PHOBIA

Equally emphatic is the myth that is created that the American brand of democracy, as its brand of capitalism, is superior to all others underpinning the position that none other model would be permitted to sprout and grow. The virtues of the two party system are eulogised as the quintessence of democracy and democratic polity. Of course others know through experience that this is only a system of ‘one agenda: two parties’. This explains the absence of genuine differences in devising and implementing foreign policy including of intervention, subversion and aggression, what one could only describe as the humbug of bipartisanship in most matters including subversion and war.

Let us consider what this dictum of “one agenda: two parties” has meant in practice. Both parties - Republican and Democratic – voted in favour of the aggressive war on Iraq, with few individual exceptions. This has been the case all through. The United States categorised as communism even manifestations of nationalism, economic independence, initiatives for social progress or even intellectual curiosity that questioned the capitalist system. Senate committee headed by Joseph McCarthy ‘against un-American activities’ in the 1950s was the crudest and wiliest manifestation of this anticommunist phobia. This was within the US. Outside, its armed escapades, subversion and aggressive wars became rampant. The US has perpetrated close to 60 major wars and incidents across the globe since the end of the Second World War. Besides there have been several assassination plots and instances of US forces being stationed abroad. There is no type of crime, including abducting, drug peddling, gun-running, currency manipulation, in which the US has not been involved. So much so, ‘Amnesty International’ reported: “Throughout the world on any given day, a man, woman or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or ‘disappeared’, at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame.” (Washington Office of Amnesty International, Human Rights & US Security Assistance, 1996)

In all these violent interventions and wars, administrations under both the Republicans and Democrats have been equally involved. American establishment’s anti-communist phobia has grown to manic proportions. That explains the continuing attempts at subversion against socialist Cuba. Cuba was liberated through armed revolution; that will not do, that too right at the doorstep of America itself. Then what about Chile where the Marxist Salvador Allende became president through elections securing the people’s mandate. As William Blum (2003) puts it succinctly in his ‘Killing Hope’: “There could be only one thing worse than a Marxist in power – an elected Marxist in power.”

ROGUE SUPERPOWER

Let us consider the history after the Second World War. We are taking this period for consideration, as during the earlier period, excepting for military interventions in the New World and the countries of the Pacific, the US by and large kept itself aloof. The Monroe Doctrine (1823) postulated that no power of the Old World (Europe) had the right to intervene in the affairs of the New World. Any such interference would be considered hostile. The only military intervention that the US was involved before the Second World War was when it sent 13,000 of its troops along with those of Britain, France and Japan invading the nascent Soviet Union. After the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the guiding logic was to snuff out communism. No system should be allowed to take roots other than capitalism – as already pointed out: its brand of capitalism. The policy of the US, as of the rest of the capitalist world has been guided by this one philosophy and objective for the whole of the 20th Century and thereafter. It is a matter for reflection how the Soviet society would have developed and the course its institutions would have taken had not this flagrant attempt to snuff-out by force of arms the fledgling socialist state taken place.

Now after the implosion of the Soviet Union, America’s attitude has become more arrogant and obtrusive. An example is the unabashed declaration in the name of “National Security Strategy” that the US would not allow any other country to become more powerful than the US. This included military as well as economic power. President Bush follows this policy only more brazenly. Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading news magazine wrote in its cover story in its issue dated September 1, 1997: “Never before in modern history has a country dominated the earth so totally as the United States does today…America is now the Schwarzenegger of international politics: showing off muscles, obtrusive, intimidating…The Americans, in the absence of limits put to them by anybody or anything, act as if they own a kind of a blank check in their McWorld.” And this was written before the war on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Before the Second World War, overt and covert interventions by the US in the Western Hemisphere and in Asia were many indeed. After the end of the Second World War these interventions became more frequent and unsettling transcending the entire globe. These interventions were motivated obviously by the desire to have strategic control all over the globe and to have control over precious resources. This includes not only energy resources like oil and other precious minerals but also fresh water.

As we comb through half a century of American history since World War II, we get a glimpse of the latest version of this Manifest Destiny in operation: We get vivid examples of blatant military aggression in the sheep’s clothing of ‘self defence’ as in Cuba and Vietnam, ‘preventive warfare’ as in Granada and Nicaragua, ‘humanitarian intervention’ as in Kosovo and East Timor and of course the latest version of ‘war on terrorism’ in Iraq.

In his latest book “Hegemony or Survival” (2004) Naom Chomsky argues that the Washington propaganda machine offers a spin cycle of patriotic imagery designed to mask the true and self-serving motives of the American government. He exposes the tradition of dominant elitism that has motivated American Presidents from Roosevelt and Kennedy to Reagan and the Bushes. In case after case, he shows how policy makers had ignored public opinion and ran roughshod over international law -- thereby perpetrating terrorist acts as ruthless as those they professed to oppose.

In the book (the first of ‘The American Empire Project’) Chomsky presents a painstakingly researched critique of what he calls America's "imperial grand strategy". He argues that America’s quest for dominance at any cost has cast America in the role of a rogue superpower that challenged the very survival of humanity.

The Americans themselves are affected by this policy that deprives them of their living standards in order to maintain this violent and aggressive military industrial machine well oiled. Their political and civil rights are gradually getting eroded. The adoption of the national security strategy document has turned the US virtually into what is described as the national security state. This was done without demur by both parties in a spirit of bipartisanship. Spawning out of this are the Patriot Act and all other activities of the American State apparatus that make a mockery of the First Amendment called the Bill of Rights (actually the first ten amendments taken together) constituting a clutch of fundamental rights of citizens considered sacrosanct. Most of all, because of its action, particularly war of occupation against Iraq, the threat of terrorism far from being abated has further grown placing countries and people in greater jeopardy.

What is to be done then? We must fight resolutely all manifestations of imperialist pressures and penetration in different aspects of the country’s and people’s lives. We must increase the awareness of the American people themselves and of the people in the affected countries – people throughout the world. Increasing the awareness we must mobilise them in actions and struggles. This collective mobilisation is the only recourse. Only such mobilisation of the people against all evil encroachments and transgressions by US imperialism can bring peace and development, hope and relief to mankind as a whole.

(The author is President of All India Insurance Employees’ Association)