Declining empires never decline gracefully. And neither will the US empire – addicted as it is to a belief in its ‘exceptionalism’ and its grounding in aggression both at home and abroad. Add to the mix that 70 million people voted for Donald Trump and 70% of Republican supporters believe that the election was stolen by the Democrats. A sick country! Joe Biden will smooth a few rough edges but won’t do much more.
Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war. Given this, the greatest military risk we run is acting as a proxy for the US in its dispute with China. The record is clear. Time and time again we have allowed ourselves to be drawn into the imperial wars of the UK and the US. We have forfeited our strategic autonomy while parroting on about our sovereignty.
Over two centuries, the US has subverted and overthrown numerous governments. It has a military and business complex that depends on war for influence and enrichment. It believes in its ‘manifest destiny’, which brings with it an assumed moral superiority it denies to others. The problems did not start with Donald Trump. They are long-standing and deep-rooted.
Australia runs great risks in committing so much of our future to the US. Instead, we must build our security in our own region and not depend so exclusively on a foreign protector.
Unfortunately, many of our political, bureaucratic, business and media elites have been on an American drip feed for so long they find it hard to think of the world without an American focus. We had a similar and dependant view of the UK in the past. That ended in tears in Singapore.
In this blog (Is war in the American DNA?), I have drawn attention repeatedly to the risks we run in being ‘joined at the hip’ to a country that is almost always at war. The facts are not disputed. The US has never had a decade without war. Since its founding in 1776, the US has been at war 93% of the time. These wars have extended from its own hemisphere to the Pacific, to Europe and most recently to the Middle East. The US has launched 201 out of 248 armed conflicts since the end of World War II. In recent decades most of these wars have been unsuccessful. The US maintains 700 military bases or sites around the world, including in Australia. Mainly in a bid to contain China and North Korea, the US has in our region a massive deployment of hardware and troops in Japan, the Republic of Korea and Guam.
Just think of the US frenzy if China had a string of similar bases in the Caribbean or their ships patrolled the Florida Keys.
The illegal US-led invasion of Iraq has resulted, directly and indirectly, in the death of a million people and the displacement of millions more. How can we deny that the US is the most aggressive and dangerous country on our planet?
The US has been meddling extensively in other countries’ affairs and elections for a century. It tried to change other countries’ governments 72 times during the Cold War. Many foreign leaders were assassinated. In the piece reproduced in this blog (The fatal expense of US Imperialism), Professor Jeffrey Sachs said:
‘The scale of US military operations is remarkable … The US has a long history of using covert and overt means to overthrow governments deemed to be unfriendly to the US … Historian John Coatsworth counts 41 cases of successful US-led regime change for an average of one government overthrow by the US every 28 months for centuries.”
The overthrow or interference in foreign governments is diverse, including Honduras, Guatemala, Iran, Haiti, Congo, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently, Syria.
And this interference continued with the undermining of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine by the US-backed Maidan coup in 2014. Gorbachev and Reagan agreed that in allowing the reunification of Germany, NATO would not extend eastwards. But with US encouragement, NATO has now provocatively extended right up to the borders of Russia. Not surprisingly, Russia is resisting.
Despite all the evidence of wars and meddling, the American Imperium continues without serious check or query in America or Australia.
I suggest several reasons why this record has not been challenged.
The first is what is often described as America’s “manifest destiny”; the God-given right to interfere in other countries’ affairs. This right is not extended to others because many Americans see themselves as more virtuous and their system of government better than others.
Professor Tom Nichols reported in this blog (How America lost its faith in expertise, and why that matters) public policy polling that revealed that 43% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats supported bombing a place called ‘Agrabah’. This turned out to be a fictional place in a cartoon. Only an ignorant people could presume that their country should bomb a city that did not exist! To this day 70% of registered Republicans doubt that Barack Obama is an American citizen.
The US has invaded countries it knew about and, in many cases, cultures and people it knew nothing about, who were assumed to be less virtuous and wise. In examining the failure in Vietnam, General Walter T Kerwin Jr observed that ‘we never understood the Vietnamese. We think we know best. We tried to force on them what they should do…’
The ignorance of ordinary America, and its politicians, of other countries is legendary but possibly just as important is their resistance to any relief of that ignorance. That may not seem unusual – but it is dangerous for a country with overwhelming military power employed around the globe.
The second reason why the American Imperium continues largely unchecked is the power of what President Eisenhower once called the “military and industrial complex” in the US. In 2020 I would add “politicians” who depend heavily on funding from powerful arms manufacturers and military and civilian personnel in more than 4,000 military facilities. The intelligence community and many universities and think-tanks also have a vested interest in the American Imperium.
This complex co-opts institutions and individuals around the globe. It has enormous influence. No US president, nor for that matter any Australian prime minister, would likely challenge it.
Australia has locked itself into this complex. Our military and defence leaders are heavily dependent on the US Departments of Defence and State, the CIA and the FBI for advice. We act as branch offices of this complex.
But it goes beyond advice. We willingly respond and join the US in disasters like Iraq and the Middle East. While the UN General Assembly votes with large majorities to curb nuclear proliferation, we remain locked into the position of the US and other nuclear powers.
Our autonomy and independence are also at great risk because our defence/security elites in Canberra have as their holy grail the concept of “interoperability” with the US. This is mirrored in US official and think-tank commentary on the role they see for us in our region. So powerful is the US influence and our willing cooperation that our foreign policies have been largely emasculated and sidelined by the defence and security views of both the US and their acolytes in Australia.
The concept of interoperability does not only mean equipment. It also means personnel, with increasingly large numbers of Australian military personnel embedded in the US military and defence establishments, especially in the Pacific Command in Hawaii.
The US military and industrial complex and its associates have a vested interest in America being at war and our defence establishment, Department of Defence, ADF, Australian Strategic Policy Institute and others are locked-in American loyalists.
The third reason for the continuing dominance of the American Imperium is the way the US expects others to abide by a “rules-based international order” that was largely determined at Bretton Woods after World War II and embedded in various UN agencies. That ‘order’ reflects the power and views of the dominant countries in the 1940s. It does not recognise the legitimate interests of such newly emerging countries as China, which now insists on playing a part in an international rules-based order.
The US only follows an international rules-based order when it suits its own interests. It pushes for a rules-based system in the South China Sea while refusing to endorse UNCLOS (Law of the Sea) or accept ICJ decisions. The invasion of Iraq was a classic case of breaking the rules. It was illegal. The resultant death and destruction in Iraq met the criteria for war crimes. But the culprits have got off scot-free. Only Tony Blair has suffered reputational damage.
In his petulance and ignorance, Donald Trump is hell-bent on destroying the WTO and the WHO, both key institutions in a global rules-based order.
Some may regard the above critique as over-stated. I don’t think so. It is obviously discomforting but it is based on the facts. It restates the obvious. I am also encouraged that many of the harshest and most accurate critics of US policies are Americans who believe their country should behave more honourably. The problem is that decision-makers and powerful interests in the US, just as in Australia, don’t listen.
Part 2 tomorrow will discuss the domestic US sickness – a failing democracy, inequality, racism and violence.
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
Comments
12 responses to “Our aggressive and violent ally. An updated repost. Part 1 of 2”
Thanks John. It needs to be said, over and over.
There is also the issue of our plutocrats being happy to align themselves with their plutocrats. Those are the ‘common values’ Scotty from Marketing goes on about. That has been going on since colonial days of course. Our ‘conservatives’ do the bidding of the wealthy, usually foreign.
We have been terribly stupid with “our” technology. Despite Japan’s record of concern for human rights, they were encouraged to purchase fission reactors that produce Plutonium. The have held onto that terrible product, despite agreements to send it to Europe. Despite Fukushima, cost about $1 Trillion, they have refused to allay fears that they might create up to 5,000 warheads from their stores.
Please do not make the error of looking at the current world situation while neglecting the past. Edmund Burke said something about that?
Good article!
The ‘western’ countries, i.e. the United States and its ‘allies’, love to speak of a ‘rules based international order’ which they say everyone should follow. That ‘rules based order’ is a way more vague concept than the actual rule of law
A rules based law given by a minority of a few rich nations makes it already clear that it can not be a global concept for a multilateral world. That would require a set of rules that everyone has agreed to. We already had and have such a system. It is called international law. But at the end of the cold war the ‘west’ began to ignore the actual international law and to replace it with its own rules which others were then supposed to follow. That hubris has come back to bite the ‘west’.
A powerful and concise precis of what’s wrong with Australian defence. We’re aggressively proud – indeed, boastful – of our military history, yet, in fact, at the national policy level, we’ve been a fearful, mendicant nation since Federation. World War II has been the sole exception, when we made an important contribution in a war of necessity. But since then our eagerness to assume the role of unquestioning loyal servant in any number of immoral and disastrous wars of choice has led almost inexorably to the national shame of war crimes, without in way enhancing our security, or for that matter our self-respect.
Hey John. You left Australia out of your list of countries subjected to interference by the US.!
Good one John was thinking of that when reading the article but as always someone like you is on the money cheers!
Thanks John for an excellent summary of the situation, which has been thoroughly documented in a mountain of literature for many years. But (again) you make it seem like its only about an arrogant bully trampling where it wishes. The core issue is that the thuggery is undertaken in order to maintain and extend the empire, the regions in which corporations and banks can do good business and from which resources flow to our supermarkets. You and I could not have such nice high and comfortable ‘living standards” if that work was not being done. We are beneficiaries of empire and the grabbing and looting is not going to stop until there is transition from a culture of individualistic, competitive acquisitiveness … that is until people are prepared to live with what is sufficient, to be collectivist and to find life satisfaction in non-material pursuits.
Ted, all very true, but I believe John is talking about a political and military empire, while you are talking about the America’s economic muscle. And of course the two are dependent on one another.
Surely your definition of the ‘beneficiaries of empire and the gabbing and looting’ needs an update. The American middle class is atrophied, replaced with massive disenfranchisement of untold millions, and the ever-increasing obscene wealth of the 0.01% of the American population. Plus based on your contention that we need the empire, it would seem to me the Chinese prosperity model, without the trampling, thuggery (and presumably murder), is infinitely preferable to what we now have.
Ted its called “collective individulism”. Henry George the American 19th century economic philospher created the concept. Those who follow HG are known as Georgists. I am one as of the many subscribers to P&I who are Georgists. Perhaps you are one too?
Sadly true. Was there ever really an American society like the one Norman Rockwell depicted for the Saturday Evening Post? That was a seemingly innocent example of American culture that infected our culture in the 1950s and ’60s and I think led impressionable youth to admire the USA. I hope those impressed youths see more clearly now! I think most Americans still imagine their culture is exceptional – bestowed e.g. by their God, who wishes them to spread it world wide. Since nearly half the voting public are so happy with Donald Trump they want him back I despair of them changing any time soon. I look forward to part 2.
Should be required reading/study in all secondary schools for all teachers and students – not just history courses!