As US Empire Disintegrates, It Becomes more Threatening

Even as the US government was participating in the development of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it was covertly intervening in other nations in direct violation of the treaties it was signing.  From 1945, the US employed defeated Japanese soldiers to fight against the communist insurgents in the Chinese civil war.  In 1947 and 1948, the US intervened on the side of the neo-fascists to defeat the leftist parties in Greece that had formed the resistance to the Nazis a few years earlier.  And of course, the US joined with the British to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953.

For over 4 decades, the excuse given for the flagrant and repeated violation of international law and morality by the US government was fighting communism.  When the Soviet Union collapsed, the excuse switched to Islamic terrorism, and now the excuse is the “threat” of what the US calls revisionist powers.  The real reasons for the rogue behavior of the US have remained the same.  Professor Stephen Gowans put it well when he said: “...the foundation of the empire’s foreign policy has been to crush any force of local independence and national assertiveness that stood in the way of enlarging the empire’s dominant economic interests…”

The US demands that all other nations structure their government and economy to benefit US corporations and banks.  Any nation that dares to put the needs of its own people before those of the Western capitalists automatically becomes an enemy.  Nations that have large sectors of their economy closed to foreign investment and thus direct the benefits of their resources and labor toward meeting the needs of their own people, rather than the profits of Western businesses are enemy states.  From Iran in 1953 to Iraq in 2003 to Syria in 2011, the US has enforced the primacy of their capitalist profits over the human needs and sovereignty of other nations at the point of a gun when necessary.

Since the 1980s, the US has added another subversive layer to its regime change toolkit - the National Endowment for Democracy.  NED, along with USAID, engages in what it euphemistically calls “democracy building” in nations that attempt to retain their sovereignty or engage with nations independent of US domination.   Opposition groups are funded and trained and media outlets are established and directed aimed at fomenting popular uprisings against the recalcitrant government.  We see their handiwork now in Belarus, Thailand, Hong Kong, and elsewhere.  If these efforts fail, those groups are encouraged to use violence to bring their government into submission to Western business interests.  Sometimes this succeeds as in Ukraine, and sometimes it fails, as in Syria.

All these methods of intervention must be called out by the international community.  National leaders need to ban any organization from receiving funding or assistance from any US government entity.  Every violation of international law by the US or its regional proxies must be opposed by all sovereign nations.  As the US Empire disintegrates, like a wounded animal, it becomes more threatening.  It is the responsibility of the entire world to resist.