As Donald Trump destroys the old world order a new myth is taking hold: before Trump, it is said, America benevolently provided the defence for the Western world, policing rogue states and promoting international free trade.

The myth is promoted by apologists for the US Democratic Party, but even the Trump Republicans have a version which European and Australian political leadership seems to have swallowed. This is the claim that in the post-war, and post-Cold War years, the US paid for the defence of Europe, Japan and Australia. It is claimed, that for decades, these countries did not spent enough on defence.

What is the reality? The reality is that for decades the US squandered billions on wars and military spending. Countries such as Germany and Japan prospered because they did not waste their limited investment funds on armaments and waging war. Instead, they invested in education, research and development, built their infrastructure and grew their industries. They benefitted from international trade, as did Australia.

The US waged wars, sometimes seeking to satisfy its imperial needs, or benefit its corporate interests, at other times based on a false reading of regional and world history. For example, the US foolishly intervened in the Vietnam civil war, and not only lost, but severely damaged its own economy in the process.

“The impact of Vietnam is so gigantic and diffuse that no adequate calculation of all the political, sociological and economic costs can be made,” Dennis Mueller of Cornell University observed in 1970. The US Defence Department reported that the US military’s share of the Southeast Asian conflict totalled $138.9-billion for the period 1965–76. But, according to the US Library of Congress, no figures are available on the exact amount of economic and military assistance channelled to Vietnam from 1950, when the US first provided arms to the French-sponsored states of Indochina. Even if a grand total were available, it would only reflect a part of the true price of the war.

Other wars were waged, or coups engineered, by the US with the direct aim of assisting imperial interests. For example, in 1952 the Guatemalan National Assembly passed critical land reform legislation to give land to peasant families. The government expropriated 234,000 acres from the US-owned banana producer, the United Fruit Company, paying it US$1.18 million, the exact figure the company had chosen to value the land for tax purposes.

But that wasn’t enough. To cut a long story short, the CIA then organised a coup that overthrew the government of President Jacobo Arbenz.

Similarly, in Iran in 1953, the CIA orchestrated the removal of the elected Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh, when his government sought a fair share of the Iranian oil revenue that at that time flowed almost entirely to British interests. A Western boycott put pressure on the government and people. With the Shah of Iran lined up to depose Mossadegh, CIA-funded mobs took to the streets, the army sided with the Shah and Mossadegh fled.

Under a new charter, Anglo-Iranian (later know as British Petroleum) retained 40% of Iranian oil and an American syndicate of the major US oil companies got 40%.

More recently, the US ignored the United Nations and waged war on Iraq, using the false claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq Body Count recorded 187,000 civilian deaths from the war, while others estimated a much higher number of deaths. The US overthrew the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and occupied the country for 20 years at an estimated direct budgetary cost of US$2.31 trillion, only to see the Taliban return to power after the US withdrawal. The Costs of War Project estimated that 243,000 people died as a direct result of this war.

Overall, US policy has destabilised the Middle East and acted on behalf of Israeli interests. Nothing better reveals the fact that the US is not a peace-maker than the war in Israel/Palestine. The Israelis have killed at least 61,709 people, including 17,492 children, in the genocidal war in Gaza. At any point, the US could have stopped this war by refusing to supply weapons. But both the Biden and Trump administrations failed to act.

Contrary to the myth, the US does not act as an honest broker on the world beat. Despite many examples of this, our political leaders trot out the nonsense that until Trump the US maintained an “international rules-based order".

China is, of course, much criticised for ignoring rules. Much is made of China’s disputes in the South China Sea. The Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled against China in the claim brought by the Philippines under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. What is ignored by those who promote the idea that the US adheres to the rules-based order is that the US has never ratified UNCLOS!

And how do these Chinese territorial disputes compare with the actual fact that the US unilaterally invades countries, and bombs and attacks others, without UN approval?

On top of this, we have the Trump first term withdrawals from the Paris climate agreement and from the Iran comprehensive nuclear plan of action.

Trump is not the only US leader who is averse to international agreements.

Writing for the Council of Foreign Relations in 2022, Anya Wahal observed, “The United States shuns treaties that appear to subordinate its governing authority to that of an international body like the United Nations. The United States consistently prioritises its perceived national interests over international co-operation, opting not to ratify to protect the rights of US businesses or safeguard the government’s freedom to act on national security.”

In the aftermath of Wold War II, Europe, Japan, China and Russia were in ruins. Never having been occupied, US industry dominated the world. To its credit, the US implemented the Marshall and MacArthur Plans to assist the post-war recovery of Europe and Japan.

And, as by far the most powerful post-war country, the US set and developed the “free” trade rules and the financial system that survived until Trump’s inauguration.

This system was not designed to provide freedom and equality for all citizens of the world, as the myth-makers would have you believe. For the US, American interests were always at the fore.

American military bases police on behalf of the US. American warships patrol international waters far from US shores, to protect US interests.

As the Guatemalan example illustrates, US regional policy did not seek to raise the living standards of its neighbours. The same is true of the policy in relation to Cuba, Grenada, Panama, Chile and Mexico, to name but a few. But having impoverished its neighbours, the US now reaps the reward of having poverty-stricken refugees seek a better life in the profiteer’s homeland.

Trump’s contribution — muddled and confused as it is — is that he has openly revealed the country’s longstanding position: the US acts on behalf of the US.