“All the world thinks of the United States today as an empire, except the people of the United States. We shrink from the word ‘empire’… We feel that there ought to be some other word for the civilizing work we do so reluctantly in these backwards countries.” – Walter Lippmann, 1927I believe that the above quote by one the most astute American journalists of the 20th Century is right on target and applies even more today than it did in 1927. It sums up what is most wrong with our country:
A toxic combination imperialism, arrogance, hypocrisy, and ignorance.Our imperialistic war in Iraq says it all. Even after the original excuse for the war was
proven to have been fabricated, after we
killed more than a million civilians, created more than
four million refugees and utterly destroyed their country, our leaders still find more excuses to continue the war. Our national news media, while sometimes bemoaning the deaths of American soldiers, rarely says a word about the deaths of more than two hundred times as many Iraqi civilians, or
what the Iraqi people think of our occupation of their country – as if their deaths and their opinions simply do not matter. Hannah Arendt was right when
she said:
Imperialism would have necessitated the invention of racism as the only possible ‘explanation’ and excuse for its deeds, even if no race-thinking had ever existed in the civilized world.
Any U.S. citizen who doesn’t understand how U.S. imperialism has operated since 1973 should read
Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. It’s one of the most informative books I’ve ever read, and so easy to read for such a complex subject.
The United States has used two primary tools to advance its imperialistic ambitions: Covert activities and military support to install or maintain in power repressive regimes that are responsive to the needs of U.S. corporations, to the great detriment of the vast majority of a nation’s population, and; influence over international financial institutions (International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank) to loan money to desperately impoverished nations while imposing conditions on those nations which are highly favorable to U.S. corporations, while keeping the great majority of its inhabitants impoverished indefinitely – a process something akin to loan sharking or indentured servitude.The game plan has been to put into practice Milton Friedman’s economic theories, developed at the University of Chicago. These theories, when used in several countries over more than three decades, have served primarily to increase the wealth and power of the wealthy (U.S. and multi-national corporations and the local elite) at the expense of everyone else. The use of these economic policies in association with violent and repressive dictatorships is no accident. Since these policies are so painful to the vast majority of a country’s inhabitants, such measures as kidnappings, executions, disappearances and torture are often needed to keep the country’s inhabitants in line. But often, financial pressures and threats alone are enough to do the job. Taken as a whole, Klein terms these methods “shock therapy” – a therapy that is brutal enough to make a person or a population docile enough to go along with what they’re told to do.Examples of U.S. imperialismI’ve discussed this process in several previous posts, using mostly examples from Klein’s book. In “
Connection between State Sponsored Terror, Corporate Greed, and Economic Shock Therapy” I describe our imperialistic activities in South America. Klein’s book begins with Chile in the early 1970s, where our
CIA conspired to overthrow the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, and installed the dictator, terrorist torturer, Augusto Pinochet in his place. I also discuss in that post our imperialist interventions in
Brazil,
Argentina,
Uruguay,
Ecuador, and other South American countries, and our use of
School of the Americas and
Operation Condor to achieve our ends. Klein summarizes our imperialist interventions in South America:
The Chicago School counterrevolution quickly spread. Brazil was already under the control of a U.S. supported junta… Friedman traveled to Brazil in 1973, at the height of that regime’s brutality, and declared the economic experiment a “miracle”. In Uruguay the military had staged a coup in 1973 and the following year decided to go the Chicago route…. The effect on Uruguay’s previously egalitarian society was immediate: real wages decreased by 28% and hordes of scavengers appeared on the streets… Next to join the experiment was Argentina in 1976, when a junta seized power from Isabel Peron. That meant that Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil – the countries that had been showcases of developmentalism – were now all run by U.S. backed military governments and were living laboratories of Chicago School economics.
In
this post I describe how the IMF was used to plunder Russia following the break-up of the Soviet Union. Klein describes the effect on the Russian people:
After only one year, shock therapy had taken a devastating toll: millions of middle-class Russians had lost their life savings when money lost its value, and abrupt cuts to subsidies meant millions of workers had not been paid in months. The average Russian consumed 40% less in 1992 than in 1991, and a third of the population fell below the poverty line. The middle class was forced to sell personal belongings from card tables on the streets.
In “
The Ruling Financial Class” I describe how the IMF did the same thing to several Asian countries whose economies were failing in the late 1990s. Klein describes the effects on the Asian people:
24 million people lost their jobs in this period… What disappeared in these parts of Asia was what was so remarkable about the region’s “miracle” in the first place: its large and growing middle class… 20 million Asians were thrown into poverty in this period of what Rodolfo Wash would have called “
planned misery”… Women and children suffered the worst of the crisis. Many rural families in the Philippines and South Korea sold their daughters to human traffickers who took them to work in the sex trade… a 20 percent increase in child prostitution.
And Klein describes how similar processes with similar results were used in Poland, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Iraq.
THE CENTURY AND A HALF WAR AGAINST SOCIALISM IN THE UNITED STATESI discuss the century and a half war against socialism in the United States in detail in
this post. One way in which this subject is relevant to the issue of U.S. imperialism is that that, during the Cold War at least, the United States often used the fear of Communism as an excuse to overthrow the governments of other countries (as
the Reagan administration did] in Latin America, for example) or to go to war against them (as we did in Vietnam, for example).
Two major problems with that excuse were that in most of the cases where we exercised our imperialism over third world countries: 1) they had no direct link with the USSR, which was the only Communist country that posed a potential military threat to us, and 2) the country was not Communist, but rather socialist. Notwithstanding those facts, the U.S. government utilized a “slippery slope” type of reasoning, where any degree of socialism in a country could represent the first step towards Communism and hence an alliance with the USSR. And then there was the “
domino theory”, where any country that turned Communist or socialist could result in other countries doing the same. So, in the name of “freedom and democracy” we repeatedly intervened in the affairs of other countries to overthrow democratically elected governments or prop up ruthless dictators with our military or economic powers.
Reasons for the US war against socialismSince the purported reasons for our century and a half war against socialism clearly make no sense, it behooves us to consider the real reasons for it. In order to understand those reasons it is first necessary to understand that much of the history of the United States, beginning with the industrial revolution that picked up steam after the Civil War (1861-1865), has involved a type of class warfare, whereby the wealthy have sought to increase their wealth and power by suppressing any movement that sought to bring power to the lower classes.Policies which tend to benefit the less wealthy and powerful include such things as: protections against environmental degradation; protection for consumers against the risks of dangerous products; protection against dangerous working conditions; anti-trust laws to ensure competition; anti-discrimination laws; progressive tax laws; minimum wage laws; provision of government health care, education, and child care assistance; promotion or assurance of full employment for those able and willing to work; and labor laws that strengthen the bargaining capabilities of workers. These kinds of policies provide needed protections to the most vulnerable of our people and benefit the good majority of the remainder of our people.The wealthy conservative elite of our society tag the “Socialism” label on all those laws and policies, listed above, that benefit less wealthy and powerful 98% of our population, and especially those that benefit the poor. They accuse anyone who advocates those policies of being “Socialists” and of engaging in “class warfare”. They do that, very simply, because those laws and policies reduce their own wealth and power.That is what the century and a half war against socialism in the United States has been mostly about. Those conservative elites are right about one thing. The policies that they rail against are indeed socialistic. When added to a primarily capitalistic system, such as operates in our country, they produce a mixed capitalism/socialism system which can maintain the production incentives of capitalism while at the same time guarding against the harmful excesses of capitalism which tend to drive people into poverty and reduce the quality of life of millions of our citizens.To the extent that successful socialist policies (such as national health care) operate in other countries, they have the potential of providing an example for Americans. If Americans see that the citizens of countries with socialist governments thrive and continue to re-elect those governments, they may consider whether or not it would be beneficial to have such policies instituted in their own country. Thus the need to intervene in those countries when feasible, to make sure that examples of successful socialist governments remain as few as possible. Naomi Klein expands on this idea:Washington has always regarded democratic socialism as a greater threat than totalitarian Communism, which was easy to vilify and made for a handy enemy… The favored tactic for dealing with the inconvenient popularity of developmentalism and democratic socialism was to try to equate them with Stalinism, deliberately blurring the clear differences between the worldviews. (Conflating all opposition with terrorism plays a similar role today.)
A brief history of the war against socialism in the United States on the domestic frontOur war against Socialism did not start with the Cold War. Suppression of the labor movement in the United States constitutes a major part of our war against socialism. For example, by attributing the
Haymarket Square bombing of 1886 to labor leader “terrorists” and imprisoning or executing the alleged perpetrators (with extremely little evidence of their guilt – See “
Death in the Haymarket – A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America” for an excellent discussion of this), our elite national news media probably set back the cause of the labor movement by several years or decades. Eugene Debs, perennial Socialist candidate for President of the United States, was
repeatedly imprisoned for speaking out about his beliefs. And
Richard Hofstadter, writing in 1970, concluded that the United States had experienced at least 160 instances in which state or federal troops had intervened in strikes, and at least 700 labor disputes in which deaths were recorded, with clearly most of the violence being perpetrated by state or federal authorities, rather than by the workers.
The FDR Presidency (1933-1945) represents the first successful effort in our country to introduce socialist policies that produced major benefits for our people. Cass Sunstein, in his book, “
The Second Bill of Rights – FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need it More than Ever”, describes the philosophy that motivated Roosevelt to fight for his radical (at the time) programs to benefit the American people:
To Roosevelt, human distress could no longer be taken as an inevitable by-product of life, society, or “nature”; it was an artifact of social policies and choices. Much human misery is preventable. The only question is whether a government is determined to prevent it…. Foremost was the idea that poverty is preventable, that poverty is destructive, wasteful, demoralizing, and that poverty is morally unacceptable in a Christian and democratic society.
As I discuss in
this post, FDR’s policies were wildly successful and resulted in the creation of a financially healthy middle class in our country for the first time in its history. Between 1947 (when accurate statistics on this issue first became available) and 1980,
median family income rose steadily (in constant 2005 dollars) from $22,499 to more than double that, $47,173.
But then, starting with the rise of the conservative movement in our country, and the election of Ronald Reagan to the U.S. Presidency, FDR’s New Deal began to be progressively dismantled, with consequent stagnation of median income and
progressive widening of the income gap in our country. And that’s where we are now.
A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNELWhen I posted on DU my four articles dealing with the imperialistic adventures of our nation as described by Naomi Klein in “The Shock Doctrine”, several posters commented on how terribly depressing this whole thing is. Indeed, this is a very depressing subject. But in the last chapter of her book, titled “
Shock Wears off – The Rise of Peoples’ Reconstruction”, Klein describes a developing trend, especially in Latin America, that appears to be very hopeful.
The stripping away of the aura of respectability surrounding Friedman’s economic movementKlein cites the pinnacle of the Neocon movement in the U.S. as being 1994, the year that Republicans took control of Congress. Almost certainly by mere coincidence, but still worth noting, is the fact that the day that the Democrats regained control of Congress
in 2006 was just nine days before the death of Milton Friedman. By that time, a
UN study found that
the richest 2% of adults in the world owned more than half of the wealth in the world. Klein writes of that fact:
The hoarding of so much wealth by a tiny minority of the world’s population was not a peaceful process, as we have seen, nor, often, was it a legal one… Many of the men who had been on the front lines of the international drive to liberate the markets from all restrictions were at that moment caught up in an astonishing array of scandals and criminal proceedings.
In support of that statement, Klein cites several instances to show how former victims have been striving to bring the perpetrators of crimes against them to justice: Augusto
Pinochet was under house arrest; in Argentina, the former junta leaders were
stripped of immunity, with some of those leaders being imprisoned; the former President of Bolivia was
wanted on murder charges; in Russia, many of the
oligarch billionaires were either in jail or in exile;
Ken Lay died in prison; Grover Norquist was
accused of influence-peddling; and then there were the whole series of
scandals involving Jack Abramoff. Klein notes the significance of all this:
This list, by no means complete, represents a radical departure from the Neoliberal creation myth. The economic crusade managed to cling to a veneer of respectability and lawfulness as it progressed. Now that veneer was being very publicly stripped away to reveal a system of gross wealth inequalities, often opened up with the aid of grotesque criminality…
As people shed the collective fear that was first instilled with tanks and cattle prods… many are demanding more democracy and more control over markets. These demands represent the greatest threat of all to Friedman’s legacy because they challenge his most central claim: that capitalism and freedom are part of the same indivisible project.
The wholesale rejection of U.S. imperialism in Latin AmericaKlein describes the rejection of U.S. imperialist policies in Latin America:
On the international stage, the staunchest opponents of Neoliberal economics were winning election after election. The Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, running on a platform of “21 Century Socialism”, was re-elected in 2006 for a third term with 63% of the vote. Despite attempts by the Bush administration to paint Venezuela as a pseudo-democracy, a poll that same year recorded that 57% of Venezuelans were happy with the state of their democracy, an approval rating on the continent second only to Uruguay’s, where the left-wing coalition party Frente Amplio had been elected… In stark contrast to this enthusiasm, in countries where economic policies remain largely unchanged… polls consistently track an eroding faith in democracy, reflected in dwindling turnout for elections, deep cynicism toward politicians and a rise in religious fundamentalism…Opposition to privatization has become the defining issue of the continent, able to make governments and break them; by late 2006, it was practically creating a domino effect.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was reelected as president of Brazil largely because he turned the vote into a referendum on privatization… In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, former head of the Sandinistas, made the country’s frequent blackouts the center of
his winning campaign…
Rafael Correa… called for the country “to overcome all the fallacies of neo-liberalism”. When he won, the new president of Ecuador
declared himself “no fan of Milton Friedman.” By then, the Bolivian president Evo Morales was approaching the end of his first year in office. After
sending in the army to take back the gas fields from multinational “plunderers,” he moved on to nationalize parts of the mining sector. In this same period in Mexico, the results of the fraud-tainted 2006 elections were being contested through the creation of an unprecedented “parallel government” of the people… Chile and Argentina are both led by politicians who define themselves against their countries’ Chicago School experiments…
Today Latin Americans are picking up the project that was so brutally interrupted all those years ago. Many of the policies cropping up are familiar: nationalization of key sectors of the economy, land reform, major new investments in education, literacy and health care…
Chavez has let it be known that if an extremist right wing element in Bolivia… makes good on its threats against the government of Evo Morales,
Venezuelan troops will help defend Bolivia’s democracy… Rafael Correa is set to take the most radical step of all… Correa’s government has announced that when the agreement for the (U.S. military) base expires in 2009,
it will not be renewed. “Ecuador is a sovereign nation… We do not need any foreign troops in our country.”
How Latin America gets away with defying U.S. powerKlein provides three related reasons for how Latin America has been able to get away with defying U.S. power in recent years.
First is the fact of massive amounts of grassroots popular backing for throwing off the yolk of U.S. imperialism and moving on with projects to benefit the whole population. When power is decentralized it is much more difficult to overthrow it. Removing a single leader from power is then not so easy or effective, as the U.S. found out when massive uprisings in Venezuela
thwarted its attempted coup against Chavez.
Secondly, Latin American countries have decided that they have had enough of loans from the IMF, with its restrictive conditions that force millions into poverty. The rejection of IMF loans in Latin America has been so complete that their percent of the
total IMF lending portfolio has shrunk from 80% in 2005 to 1% in 2007. And it’s not just Latin America. During the same time period the IMF’s worldwide lending portfolio shrunk from $81 billion to $11.8 billion. Klein sums up the future of the IMF:
The IMF, a pariah in so many countries where it has treated crises as profit-making opportunities, is starting to wither away. The World Bank faces an equally grim future.
And finally, there is the fact that the region has become much more integrated in its effort to throw off U.S. imperialism. Many Latin American nations stand ready to share resources with neighbor nations who lack those resources. For example, Chavez has
offered heavily subsidized oil to the poorer nations of the region.
Klein also notes several other examples throughout the world where nations are turning away from U.S. favored Neoliberal economic policies. But Latin America in the prime example, and Klein explains why:
As inhabitants of the first shock lab, Latin Americans have had the most time to recover their bearings. Years of street protests have created new political groupings, eventually gaining the strength… to begin to change the power structures of the state…Once the mechanics of the shock doctrine are deeply and collectively understood, whole communities become harder to take by surprise… Today… there are just too many people in the world who have had direct experience with the shock doctrine: they know how it works…
CONCLUDING REMARKS – TO RIGHT WING FOOLS WHO DON’T LIKE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THISI know what the reaction will be of right wing fools who read this post. They’ll be SHOCKED that an American citizen could “hate America” so much. They’ll hate me for failing to take pride in our military might, and they’ll consider me a traitor for my happiness at the thought of our military power being attenuated by third world nations that don’t have the sense or gratitude to do what we want them to do. They’ll say that I want us to “lose” our war in Iraq, that I want to “weaken” our country, and that I don’t deserve to live in this country. Before answering charges such as these, I’d like to preface my remarks by briefly summarizing the balance sheet in Latin America, as described by James Petras in his book “Ruling and Ruled”:
If we add to the concentration of $157 billion in the hands of an infinitesimal fraction of the Latin American elite, the $990 billion taken out by foreign banks in debt payments, and the $1 trillion taken out by way of profits…. over the past decade and a half, we have an adequate framework for understanding why Latin America continues to have stagnant economies with over two thirds of its population with inadequate living standards.
The responsibility of the US for the growth of Latin American billionaires and mass poverty is several-fold and involves a very wide gamut of political institutions, business elites and academic and media moguls. First and foremost the US backed the military dictators and Neoliberal politicians who set up the billionaire economic models.
My answer to those who would castigate me for being outraged over a situation like this is that I cannot take pride in a system that creates billionaires at the cost of throwing millions of people into poverty, misery and fear. I cannot take pride in a country that the rest of the world accurately sees as the world’s biggest bully. And I cannot take pride in bombing the hell out of a country that poses no threat to us, killing hundreds of thousands of its people, and destroying its infrastructure.None of these things do anything at all to improve my life. Nor do they do anything to improve the lives of the vast majority of my fellow Americans. Instead, they create anti-American hatred, thereby fueling the recruitment of anti-American terrorists, while destroying the lives of millions upon millions of people throughout the world. Only an arrogant idiot could take pride in all that.Yes, I hate it when my government does those things. Yes, I hope that we “lose” the Iraq war, if “losing” means stopping the death and destruction and taking WW III off the table. Yes, I hope that the rest of the world counters and defeats our imperial ambitions – or rather the imperial ambitions of our wealthy elite and war profiteers who profit from US imperialism.A government should be judged by how it benefits or harms its citizens and how it benefits or harms the rest of humanity. No nation has the right to destroy the lives of other peoples just to enhance the wealth and power of a wealthy elite minority.
I believe that most Americans and their country will benefit enormously by having their country’s military might and imperial ambitions humbled by the rest of humanity. Then we will be able to live in peace and work with the other nations of the world to make a better life for all of us. If wanting that means “hating America”, then so be it.
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