#63 American Imperial Rule: American Intervention, Colonialism and Foreign Policy

"World war II marked the apogee of industrialised "total war". Great powers savaged one another. Hostilities engulfed the globe. Mobilisations extended to virtually every sector of every nation. Air war included the terror bombing of civilians, emerged as a central strategy of the victorious Anglo-American powers. The devastation was catastrophic almost everywhere with the notable exception of the United States, which exited the strife unscathed and unmatched in power and influence. The death toll of fighting forces plus civilians was staggering almost everywhere … in contrast to World War I, post-war death and destruction have been comparatively small. By any other measure, it has been appalling … and shows no signs of abating ... The military playbook now meshes brute force with a focus on non-state terrorism, counterinsurgency clandestine operations, vast web of American military bases....and most touted of all a revolutionary new era of computerised "precision" warfare"

- John Dower, The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, Haymarket Books 2017

American Imperial Rule

‘The American century’ is considered the 20th century after 1945. From this time onwards, until the 21st century when China came again on to the world stage, America reigned supreme. This and the next several blogs will outline the framework and the choices she made to achieve global supremacy.

Unlike the earlier global powers, Britain, France, and the Netherlands, from 1815 to 1945, and before them Spain and Portugal from 1450s to 1815, the government and their think tanks carefully considered their options and structures. The earlier imperial powers had been led in the main by adventurers and privately financed enterprises. After 1945, American imperial expansion was led by her Government. And she knew the institutions which she wished to create to achieve world dominance.

Soon after 1945, the USA unilaterally decided to create the so-called Cold War. This was an all-out attempt to rid the world of socialism, wherever it occurred and in whatever form. The Cold War was a bold policy to:

  • Rid the USA itself of socialists and destroy the American Communist Party

  • Confront the USSR and change its government

  • Destroy socialists and socialist political parties wherever they occurred in the world

  • To remake the world in terms of the USA’s interests globally, however, they were interpreted in Washington

At the time in 1948, the Cold War was not inevitable. President Roosevelt died on April 12th 1945 and German military forces surrendered in Europe on April 29th. Roosevelt had always demanded that Germany surrender unconditionally so that American, Britain and Soviet post-war cooperation could run both Eastern and Western Europe. Roosevelt insisted that joint responsibility of the three governments would end the failed system of "exclusive alliances and spheres of influence, the balance of powers" which had been Britain's old system of divide-and-rule in the 19th century.

Roosevelt's death altered not only how the peace would be constituted but the entire future of global relations, as we shall show.

An alternative plan to Roosevelt's was being created by Allen Dulles who later became head of the CIA. He had moved to Switzerland before the end of the war to discuss the future with his German friends in the Nazi administration. Alongside Churchill, there was a plan ominously called Operation Unthinkable, that Britain and Germany would come together to invade Russia a second time to finally destroy the USSR. This plan never came to pass, as it turned out. But it illustrated who were the ‘real enemies’ in the views of certain American and British leaders. As Roosevelt died prematurely and Truman became President of the USA, Allen Dulles became CIA’s director of Covert Operations.

American Intervention, Colonialism and Foreign Policy

At the end of the 19th century, the USA began to intervene in other country’s affairs. They colonised Cuba, the Philippines, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. At the time, a great debate ensued about the role that America would play in either dominating the world, or whether it should benignly build-up 'cosmopolitan democracies'. Mark Twain at the time expressed an anti-imperialist tendency which has always been there in US ideology. This debate has been told graphically by Stephen Kinzer.

Three US Presidents, President Woodrow Wilson (whom we saw in action in Versailles in 1919), President Roosevelt (FDR), and later President John Kennedy were all more or less of a single mind: America’s role on the global stage should be benign. After 1945, the great question that faced American leaders was whether they should intervene violently in other people’s countries. There was a strong anti-imperialist current in US ideology. Should they build a cosmopolitan world order? Woodrow Wilson had been a Presbyterian professor; he wished to see the disenfranchised peoples of the world choose the sovereignty under which they were to live.

All three of these American leaders had distinct compassionate views about the role of the USA and world power. They all believed that America had a superior system of governance and other peoples would be better off if they followed the American example. All three, like the British before them, were puffed up with a sense of mission. That they failed is clear. Up to the death of President Kennedy in 1963, there were two competing sets of leaders within the USA: those that espoused 'liberal' intentions to the world’s economy and those who were more aggressive like the Dulles brothers who wished to destroy socialism in any form.

FDR's New Deal – that is, the USA’s economic response to the great depression 1929/31 – was its infrastructure development powered by the US State. The New Deal was devoted to 'progress' within the USA. It has inspired nationalists and 'modernisers' in the USA ever since. FDR’s views on post-war development were similar. Kennedy ran for a seat in Congress in 1946. Both he and FDR had sought to abolish what they both considered was, ‘the global financial looting system’ which controlled continents under the colonial system. Like Roosevelt, Kennedy called for the economic development of the poor Muslim countries based on the sovereign use of their oil resources. FDR’s plans for progress have since been buried under President Truman who took over US power, in later 1945.

Kennedy had aired a radio report on the sickness of the US alliances with Britain and France which is worth repeating here:

“The post-war colonial world is an area in which poverty and sickness and disease are rampant, in which justice and inequality are old and ingrained and in which the fires of nationalism long dormant have been kindled and are now ablaze. It is an area of our world that for 100 years and more has been the source of empire for western Europe...”

“A Middle East Command without the cooperation and support of the Middle Eastern Countries ... not only would intensify every anti-western force now active in that area, but from a military point of view would be doomed to failure...”

“The true enemy of the Arab world is poverty ... Our intervention on behalf of England's oil investment in Iran ... our avowed willingness to assume an almost imperial military responsibility of the Suez...”

“One finds too many of our representatives toadying to the shorter aims of our western nations, with no eagerness to understand the real hopes and desires of the people to which they are accredited...”

“The East today is no longer the East of Palmerston and Disraeli and Cromer ... We want, we may need, allies in ideas, in resources, even in arms, but if we would have allies, we must first of all gather to ourselves friends."

- From the Papers of John F Kennedy, Presidential Papers Special Events Through the Years, Radio Report on a trip to the Middle and Far East 1951. For details of this conflict see, The Coup, then and now, The Enemies of Humanity try to give Trump the JFK Treatment by Anton Chaitkin in The Saker and World News Daily Information Clearing House 13th June 2017

It is not surprising that Kennedy was assassinated. His ideas and goals were in sharp contradiction to all the Presidents and the secret services of the USA after his death. Kennedy's perspectives on the USSR and to the development of the then Third World conflicted with Allan Dulles, head of the CIA, and his antagonism to everything socialist. We may never know who was behind the killing. But there is no doubt that Kennedy stood in direct opposition, as had Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt before him, to the direction of American leaders who pursued the Cold War.

With Roosevelt out of the way in 1945, America turned to the Cold War as the centrepiece of running world affairs. This turned out to be an alarming confrontation between the two superpowers, the Americans and the Soviets. The story has been told in the mainstream as a confrontation between two blocs, the one capitalist and the other communism. While true, this fails to tell the whole story, and while the USA was undoubtedly the overwhelming military power on earth, she was unable to persuade many of the new nation-states to follow her lead.

The Cold War and the USA's aggressive attempt to assert her influence across the world is the primary context for the struggle of the newly independent nations to assert their sovereignty from the 1950s onwards.


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#64 Controlling the Peace: The Re-establishment of World Power

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#62 Independence, Democracy Freedom from Colonial Rule