The Tendrils of U.S. Imperialism.

ANTI-IMPERIALISM / ISSUE № 5

Recent illegal military intervention in Venezuela by the U.S. reminds us that empire never left. The world is at a point where we must interrogate our relationship with imperialism, Noah Everard writes:

It has been called by many names: The West, the Modern Era, the American Dream, Neoliberalism, US imperialism and so on. A vicious beast, born from the blood of natives, raised on paranoia and steel, and now standing tall on a mountain of gold and bones. Even in Aotearoa, an island in the depth of the pacific, we are a piece of this beast’s horde. Million dollar movies, billion dollar franchises, super bowls and fashion shows, symbols of freedom and the centre of attention, secret police, and secret sex cults. We are swarmed on all sides by the plague of the US Empire. 

For the past one hundred years, most of the world has been living in the American Age. Out of the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki arose a new world order of American dominance. The breadth of this global force is simply too immense and its tunnels too deep, so I will do what I can to describe the anatomy of this dreadful creature and the scorched history which it has left in its path. 

The victories of WWII allowed for the USA’s hand to stretch far and wide. After committing the largest terrorist attack in history, twice, the United States found themselves able to station troops in places like France, Italy, Germany as countries were now too terrified to subvert the rule of Uncle Sam. And yes, the largest terrorist attacks in history are the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To justify this point we must define terrorist attack. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, a terrorist attack is any threat or use of violence which is done to incite fear and terror among a wide populace, who are usually civilians. The dropping of atomic bombs in Japan are estimated to have killed 100,000 to 246,000 people, most of which were civilians. These bombs were dropped in the hopes that it would terrorise and scare the Japanese into surrender. Thus, it is evident that these horrific attacks fall under the label of terrorism. This unveils the visage of America and the morality of the West, to unmask the truth, that the USA is the largest terrorist state in the world. 

Time and time again the US Empire rolls out their foreign agenda of regime change, intervention, the lies of ‘preemptive attack’ and moral war. The ‘War on Drugs’, the ‘War on Terror’, the ‘Domino Effect’. It comes in many shapes and sizes, glamourised or patched up by the propaganda machine. But if we look through the media buzz words and false statements, it is the same imperialist motives which have plagued the earth for centuries. For instance, in the case of Vietnam, the US claimed that an American Destroyer had been attacked by two North Vietnamese naval vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, which consequently led President Johnson to significantly increase US involvement in Vietnam, deploying as many as 186,000 troops in 1966 and 536,000 in 1969. 7.5 million tonnes of explosives were dropped and the estimated death toll of Vietnamese rose to as high as 1.5 to 3 million. Later investigations proved that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was fabricated, so what then was the reasoning for such vile military intervention? The American media, like many times before and countless times after, said it was to protect the freedom of the West and that their institutions of democracy were under threat. This notion of protecting the West has been evoked countless times, excusing invasion after invasion, attacking a foreign land and claiming that they are the heroes, that they are the ones who are in the unique position to help. 

Similar to the intervention in Vietnam, the Guatemalan coup d’état of 1954 saw the democratically elected Jacob Árbenz overthrown by a CIA backed and orchestrated covert mission called PBSuccess. The US utilised the prominence of the Red Scare to justify its actions. It named the significant land and labour reforms of Guatemala as ‘communist’ and that its people were in need of saving. In truth, Jacob Árbenz’s policies were a blow to the finances and power of the United Fruit Company, an American Corporation, which owned massive swathes of South American land and effectively controlled Guatemala prior to its democratisation. Árbenz’s administration had repurchased large amounts of land and redistributed it amongst the population. It was these exact policies which the US dubbed as communist and thus a threat to American democracy. It is not a threat to democracy, but rather, a threat to America and what it truly stands for. The democratic reforms of Guatemala had challenged the US Empire and the corporations and plutocrats who ruled it, by actively opposing the capitalist ideology and its imperial ambitions of exploitation.

The examples of Vietnam and Guatemala are just two in a sea of US foreign intervention and as the decades go by we see the US become bolder and more careless in its actions. The full scale invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, and the fabrication of the existence of weapons of mass destruction, showed the US that they could invade a sovereign nation and get away with it; no CIA funding of rebels or covert missions were needed. US imperialism has caught the majority of the world in its net. Institutions like the EU and Commonwealth bow down to the words of the White House, which threatens sovereign nations with crippling embargoes, tariffs and military might, in order to obtain their subjugation. Europe’s foreign policy is America’s foreign policy and so on. Smaller states like New Zealand are not safe either, with an FBI office present in our capital city, we follow behind America's harmful decisions, choosing not to condemn their atrocities in hopes of being thrown a bone of economic relief. How can we, a country which once pioneered human rights, have such strong ties to this expansionist regime? Aotearoa is an outpost of Western power in the Pacific, with the leadership of the Beehive consistently aligned with US foreign policy, sending military aid to US troops in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq. The New Zealand political victories of women’s suffrage and the Springbok tour protests were achieved not by those in power, but by those who chose to stand up and fight against that power. Our country’s government and institutions are still capitalist at heart, built on ideas of aristocracy and eurocentrism. We may only change our country’s political alignment by changing its political leadership, through vote or otherwise.   

The power of the US is immense. It sets its eyes on anything and demands it as its right. After the Trump administration’s recent success of regime change in Venezuela, it looks next to countries like Greenland, Columbia, and Cuba. An empire ruled by the rich and powerful, wants only to stay rich and powerful, acting exclusively on its own imperial accord. As the threat of fascism boils to the surface and the rulers of this malicious empire become more decadent and deranged, we must arm ourselves with critical tools of liberation, which seek to tear down the cloak of lies and propaganda, exposing the underbelly of corruption and showing us what it truly is. Empires are not a thing of the past. We must remember that an empire can never be wrong nor is it ever safe, and neither is our freedom so long as they exist.