War as a Tool in Foreign Policy

As time has progressed, it seems through globalization and through a collapse in the Soviet Union, a power which had balanced America's, America has taken on an aggressive foreign policy where offense is the best defense.

War/Conflict is being used to make gains---to acquire interests. Those interests are not acknowledged or told to the public. We often feel we are conspiracy theorists when we learn the truth that a war could be waged for oil.

The mantra in American history is that he we are a free country who promotes democracy throughout the world.

That is true except our democracy is a perverted brand. If you buy what we're selling, you must execute it in the way we tell you too. Or else...

by Kevin Gosztola (207 articles, 111 quicklinks, 68 diaries, 806 comments) on Friday, September 28, 2007 at 9:30:58 AM
 

Actually, Kevin, since the USSR's collapse, the difference

in the perceived aggressiveness of US foreign policy has been mainly in how the public relations has been managed -- not in the aggressiveness itself. Ever since WWII, the US has been much more aggressive than Americans have recognized, overthrowing governments left & right, & installing brutal dictatorships. But its PR stance has kept this largely hidden from the American public, & the media has always played along with this. You're quite right about the "mantra," but our mantra has been self-serving PR. (You're also right that "our democracy is a perverted brand.")

Noam Chomsky has written, for example, that if the US were held to the same standards of international law that were upheld at Nuremberg, every American president since WWII would be hanged for war crimes. This is no exaggeration. One of the best books to read to learn the truth about US foreign policy since WWII is William Blum's "Killing Hope," in which he examines about 65 of the main US interventions in other countries since 1945. We killed millions of people, either directly or indirectly (3 million in SE Asia alone, mostly civilian peasants). We overthrew scores of elected governments & assassinated their leaders. This was always in pursuit of material interests, yet was always presented to the US public as a matter of some lofty principle.

Often, interventions in other countries sponsored by the US were simply not reported on by the American media. Or, if they were mentioned at all, it was made to look as though our proxies in other countries were the ones with blood on their hands, since often they did the actual killing (though with our full support, financing, training, & weaponry). And then too, the US media has virtually always presented an image of these conflicts that distorted their true nature. For instance, Vietnam was presented as a well-intentioned effort to "come to the aid of our ally (S Vietnam), & to defend freedom & democracy" etc.

Even a major conflict like WWI was not at all what it was presented as being. As historian Howard Zinn has written, the true interests there had much to do with protecting Wall Street. The financier JP Morgan had caused so much Wall St money to be loaned to the British, that the US essentially acquired a financial stake in seeing to it that the Brits were not defeated.

by Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1165 comments) on Friday, September 28, 2007 at 11:20:34 AM