As you may have noticed, there has of late been a great deal of concern over China and its status as a rising empire, both here in the limited sphere of NSG and more widely in the political milieu. Many people have voiced their concerns over what a Chinese hegemony might look like, and the threat that it poses to values of democracy and human rights. And I personally would agree that this is indeed a field of concern, but there is already enough discussion of this. What I wish to discuss here is the far more palpable threat posed by the current global ruler, the United States of America.
First, some historical context. English settlers first arrived in what would become the state of Virginia in 1607, establishing the colony of Jamestown. The first African slaves arrived in the colonies in 1619, where they would go on to prop up the American economy for nearly two-hundred and fifty years. The settlers acquired their independence from Britain in the American Revolutionary War, declaring it in 1776. Following the establishment of their status as an independent nation, the Americans drove westward as part of an ideology of Manifest Destiny, conquering and brutalising the native peoples that had lived there for thousands of years. Incidents like the Trail of Tears have been referred to as genocide and would go on to inspire the Nazi plans for lebensraum and Generalplan Ost. The American slave system, based on racial oppression on a mass scale, would finally be dismantled following the American Civil War in 1865. However, racial oppression remained prevalent in American society, and the Thirteenth Amendment that had abolished slavery included a loophole to allow for the private exploitation of prison labour, a demographic that was and continues to be heavily racialised.
It was at the end of the nineteenth century that America turned its gaze abroad, seeking to emulate the colonial exploits of Europe. The Spanish-American War resulted in the capture of the Spanish colonial territories of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, the latter attempting to declare independence before being crushed by the Americans, the conflict killing over 200,000 Filipino civilians. American imperialism would continue to plague the Caribbean and Central America in a period known as the Banana Wars, as America bullied and invaded its smaller neighbours to ensure its dominance over the region. The US Marine Corps general Smedley Butler, who was heavily involved in these actions, would go on to write the book War is a Racket, exposing the corporate interests lying behind the Empire.
Fast forwarding to the end of the Second World War, with France and Britain in disarray and Japan and Germany crushed, the United States was at last able to make its play for global dominance, opposed in this by the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War period, America would be involved in numerous civil wars and high-profile assassinations, infamously establishing a network of ruthless far-right dictatorships throughout the Americas in Operation Condor. In Korea and Vietnam, American forces brutalised civilians in events like the No Gun Ri and My Lai massacres as they propped up yet more dictators in the form of Syngman Rhee and Ngo Dinh Diem. In Afghanistan they supplied weapons and advisors to islamic fundamentalist Mujahideen, an act that would come back to bite them in the form of al Qaeda and the Taliban. All this illustrates but a tiny fraction of American foreign policy during the Cold War, and does not even mention the harsh repressions at home with the suppression and assassination of civil rights activists and the racially charged War on Drugs.
In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed, and the United States of America stood as the world's sole superpower, having achieved global domination. American corporations had free rein in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia, ruthlessly exploiting both their labour and natural resources in an effort to squeeze out every last drop of profit. Regimes that stood against the new American world order like those of Iraq and Libya were crushed, while others like Iran and North Korea are continually demonised by American media, with the threat of war continually on the horizon. Foreign and American nationals are extrajudicially executed via drone strikes, attacks that have caused significant civilian casualties in addition to their intended targets while American weapons are used to wage genocidal wars like that in Yemen.
At home too, oppression continued. Government agencies engage in mass surveillance of the civilian population, in breach of their civil rights. Just this year, people protesting in support of their rights have been met with a heavy handed response from law enforcement, protests against police brutality being met with ever-increasing levels of that very brutality. Refugees fleeing from the failures of US interference in Central America have been imprisoned in concentration camps and sterilised against their will, another action that could potentially be considered genocidal. None of this shows any sign of stopping soon. While the current administration may be particularly egregious in their actions, these issues have been plaguing America and the world for over a century, and are unlikely to stop under the regime of a man who served as the right hand of the Obama administration.
So my question to you here on NSG is this: What is to be done?
We can acknowledge the threat posed by China, we can acknowledge the terrible things have done and are currently doing, we can be concerned about what the future might look like should they come to dominate the globe, but the fact of the matter is that presently they do not. The current global ruler has sat on its throne for at least thirty years, and in that time has been complicit in numerous crimes against humanity both at home and abroad. The present threat to democracy and human rights is clear. The purpose of this thread is to both examine what America has done, for this is far from a comprehensive list, and to ask what should, and could, be done about it?
