Pearls and Irritations

We are a nation in denial that we are ‘joined at the hip’ to a dangerous ally. Apart from brief isolationist periods, the US has been almost perpetually at war; wars that we have often foolishly been drawn into. The US has subverted and overthrown numerous governments over two centuries. It has a military and business complex, almost a ‘hidden state’, that depends on war for influence and enrichment. It believes in its ‘manifest destiny’ which brings with it an assumed moral superiority which it denies to others. As the US goes into relative economic decline, it will be asking allies such as Australia for more help and support. We are running great risks in committing so much of our future to the US. We must build our security in our own region and not depend so exclusively on a foreign protector.  

 In this blog over many months and most recently in the last few days (Is war in the American DNA?), I have drawn attention 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 WWII. In recent decades most of these wars have been unsuccessful. The US maintains 700 military bases or sites around the world including in Australia. In our own region, mainly to contain China and North Korea, it has massive deployment of hardware and troops in Japan, the ROK and Guam.

The US has been extensively meddling 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 overage of one government overthrow by the US every 28 months for centuries”.

The overthrow or interference in foreign governments are 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 the Ukraine by the US-backed Maidan coup in 2014. Gorbachev and Regan 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 in other countries’ affairs, the American Imperium continues without serious check or query in America or Australia.

I suggest there are several reasons why the American record of war and interference 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 given to others because many Americans see themselves as more virtuous and their system of government better than others.

Despite their assumed world role, many Americans have a limited understanding of other countries’ culture and life. Only 32% of Americans have passports. In the UK and Australia it is 70%. Before he became President, George Bush had only been overseas once. That was to visit Beijing where his father was the Ambassador.

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’ which 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 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 than the US. 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 2018, I would add “politicians” to that complex who depend heavily on funding from powerful arms manufacturers across the country and the “military and civilian personnel” in over 4,000 military facilities . The intelligence community, corporate funding of universities and think-tanks also have a vested interest in the American Imperium.

This complex which co-opts institutions and individuals in Australia, is called by some “the hidden state”. 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. 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 in to the position of the US and other nuclear powers.

Our autonomy and independence is 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 US influence and our willing cooperation with it 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 where increasingly large numbers of Australian military personnel are embedded in the US military and defence establishments, especially in the Pacific Command in Hawaii.The last US Commander in Hawaii is to be the new US Ambassador in Australia!

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” which was largely determined at Bretton Woods after WWII and embedded in various UN agencies. That ‘order’ reflects the power and views of the dominant countries in the 1940s. It does not recognize legitimate interests of newly-emerging countries like China who now insist 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 gone scot free.

Although quite factual, some may regard the above critique as over-done. 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 that 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.

It is a myth that democracies like America will behave internationally at a higher level of morality. Countries act in their own interests as they perceive them. We need to discount the noble ideas espoused by Americans on how they run their own country on the domestic front, and look instead at how they consistently treat other countries. Consider how the Kurds are being treated. They led the fight against ISIS but are now abandoned by the US and other ‘allies’. The scrapping of the alliance with them is made the more dishonourable by the emergence of the new version of the US/Saudi alliance with its resulting tragedy in Yemen.

US claims about how well they run their own country are challenged on so many fronts. 43 million US citizens live in poverty, they have a massive prison population with its indelible racist connotations, guns are ubiquitous and they refuse to address the issue. Violence is as American as cherry pie.

The founding documents of the US inspire Americans and many people throughout the world. “The land of the free and the home of the brave” still has a clarion call. Unfortunately, those core values have often been denied to others. For example, when the Philippines sought US support it was invaded instead. Ho Chi Minh wanted US support for independence but Vietnam was invaded .

Like many democracies, including our own, money and vested interests are corrupting public life.   As some have described it, ‘Democracy’ in the US has been replaced by ‘Donocracy’, with practically no restrictions on funding of elections and political activity for decades. Vested interests (the Washington ‘swamp’) are largely unchecked. House of Representatives electorates are gerrymandered and poor and minority group voters are often excluded from the rolls. The powerful Jewish lobby, supported by fundamentalist Christians, has run US policy off the rails on Israel and the Middle East.

The US has slipped to number 21 as a ‘flawed democracy’ in the Economist’s Intelligence 2016 Democracy Index. (NZ was ranked 4 and Australia 10). It noted that ‘public confidence in government has slumped to historic lows in the US.’ That was before Trump!

In Part 2 tomorrow I will comment that the risks in our alliance with the US predate Trump and the role of the media and others that keep us in denial about those risks.

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