American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U. S. Diplomacy

Useful, though idealistic, account of US empire

The author is an American academic, an ex-officer of the US Army. Chapter One, `The myth of the reluctant superpower¿, exposes the nonsense that the US state just responds to events, improvising as it goes, containing others¿ aggressions, going to war only in necessary self-defence. Bacevich notes that the US state¿s ¿purpose is to preserve and, where both feasible and conducive to U.S. interests, to expand an American imperium.¿ He shows the basic continuity of US foreign policy, ¿the unflagging self-interest and large ambitions underlying all U.S. policy.¿ Globalisation expresses US economic, political, military and cultural supremacy, maintained by unilateral aggressive wars, through military proconsuls, gunboats and Gurkhas. The US state claims that its `internationalism¿ is progressive and `isolationism¿ is backward, that the USA is the vanguard of history, the pioneer, leading the world to the future of peace and prosperity. But a single dominant power brings not peace but perpetual war: the Pax Britannica involved Britain in war every single year while the Empire lasted. The same holds for the USA, ever since 1898. Since the Soviet Union¿s suicide, US warmongering has speeded up: since 1989, the USA has made 47 overseas military interventions, following a consistent strategy for US empire. Clinton¿s war in Somalia killed between 6,000 and 10,000 civilians, two-thirds of them women and children, according to a senior US officer. The illegal war against Kosovo, ostensibly humanitarian, became a full-blooded war against Serbian civilians, killing at least 1,500. In Afghanistan, US forces have so far killed between 1,000 and 4,000 civilians. US forces are now stuck in Iraq, where they have killed more than 13,000 civilians. The US naval victory at Manila Bay in 1898 led to forty years of occupying and `pacifying¿ the Philippines. How long will we tolerate this increasingly genocidal war against the Iraqi people? Bacevich calls for honestly recognising that the USA is an empire, so it can be run morally and realistically. But empire, founded on exploitation and repression, denies democracy, abroad and at home. It is reactionary, not progressive, and can no more be run morally than slavery can.