By Sudip Bhattacharya
October 22, 2021 -- "Information
Clearing House -
"Counterpunch"-
The
U.S. military has nearly 800 military bases
scattered over 70 countries. China, its
most recent competitor, has one.
Spending for the U.S. military is about
three times the amount Chinese
government spends, and is more than the
military budgets of Russia, India, the
U.K., Saudi Arabia, France, Japan, Germany
and China combined.
“The U.S. will remain a dominant imperial
power for a long time into the future,”
Daniel Bessner, assistant professor in
American Foreign Policy at the University of
Washington explained to me, adding, “The
sheer power of the U.S. is just
overwhelming.”[1]
There has been some “rot” in the U.S.
empire, as exemplified by the election of
Donald Trump and how swiftly the U.S.
supported government in Afghanistan fell to
the Taliban, and yet, the locus of power in
the world is still what U.S. policymakers
and their allies desire. Still, the global
capitalist system that the U.S. and its
allies, especially Europe and Japan, had
constructed and maintained post-WWII remains
relatively intact, and although some
countries, like France and Germany, as
historian Adam Tooze writes in his latest
work reflecting on the past year of
Covid-19, have begun to reorient themselves
toward China, the Chinese government do not
have the capacity to challenge U.S. hegemony
worldwide. As Bessner, and others have
noted, the CCP-led Chinese government’s
ambitions are very much regional, and they
may have the upper-hand over the U.S. in
Asia, the fact remains that it is the U.S.
that can still retain some measure of
influence in Asia, as well as shape politics
across the globe.
Michael D. Swaine, director of the East
Asia program at the Quincy Institute, wrote
in a piece in
Foreign Policy,
Some argue that China could
militarily push the United States out of
Asia and dominate that region, denying
the country air and naval access and
hence support for critical allies. This
would presumably have an existential
impact by virtue of the supposedly
critical importance of that region to
the stability and prosperity of the
United States. Yet there are no signs
that Washington is losing either the
will or the capacity to remain a major
military actor in the region and one
closely connected to major Asian allies,
which are themselves opposed to China
dominating the region. In reality, the
greater danger in Asia is that
Washington could so militarize its
response to China that its actions and
policies become repugnant even to U.S.
allies.
In fact, the Biden administration, the
U.K. and Australia have formed an alliance
(of nations built on colonial plunder but
think of themselves as arbiters of
“freedom”), sending
in submarines to surround China, a move that
China cannot replicate. China does not
have the same level of allies nor the
individual strength the U.S. does.
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It is evident that the U.S. empire,
despite pulling troops out of Afghanistan
and the rise of China, and the global
recessions, continues to loom over the rest
of the world. Its power unmatched by any
other nation, including China.
How has this been the case, especially
following the collapse of the U.S.S.R., when
the justifications for a so-called free
world led by the U.S. had essentially
disappeared practically overnight? Why
hasn’t spending on the military been cut?
Why has there been a looming presence of
U.S. imperial might, or to some extent, an
acceptance of U.S. power? Why hasn’t U.S.
empire been more scrutinized politically?
Why has it taken this long for even some,
such as members of The Squad, to start that
necessary discussion of U.S. as an empire to
begin with?
Part of the answer is quite simple, in
that the U.S., after WWII, used what some
analysts would call “gunboat diplomacy”,
which is brute force, from supporting coups,
to leading invasions and occupations, to
shattering any opposition abroad,
like arming and financially supporting gangs
and thugs in Indonesia to go ahead and
murder and torture and disappear
millions of Communists, who had been
organizing the peasants who still lacked
power and resources after Indonesia achieved
its independence from the Dutch.
Brutality is always behind an empire’s
rise, especially that of the U.S., a settler
colonial nation with its origin story made
possible through the stealing of land,
the snatching away of resources, of
so-called founding fathers burning crops so
that indigenous peoples could starve.
Yet, as the Italian Marxist Antonio
Gramsci recognized in the machinations of
capital broadly and its ability to
regenerate beyond crises, the ability for
the U.S. empire to sustain itself has also
much to do with developing constituencies
that also depend on its power and influence.
After all, if the U.S. empire had to
solely rely on brute force and the
suppression of all other groups and nations
and peoples, it would not be able to
maintain the power it’d need to extract
profit and resources. Frantz Fanon, the
anti-colonialist thinker and practitioner,
also knew that empire needs a mixture of
extreme coercion and consent.
“A blind domination on the model of
slavery is not economically profitable for
the metropolis,” Fanon wrote in his famous
essay, “On Violence”.
Instead, economic deals must be made.
French settlers must be encouraged to own
land in a place like Algeria and thereby,
tie them deeply to the cause of sustaining
French rule. A material incentive that
develops a people, regardless of personal
motivation, are now feeling intertwined with
the fate of the empire.
In the U.S., that would be the defense
contractors, including the workforce,
policymakers, “intellectuals”, and the
broader U.S. public, oftentimes kept in the
dark, or kept at bay with fairly cheap
consumer goods. An immune system has been
developed.
Andrew Cockburn, author of
The Spoils of War: Power, Profit, and
the American War Machine, writes,
“The implications are
profound, suggesting that the [Military
Industrial Complex] is embedded in our
society to such a degree that it cannot be
dislodged, and also that it could be said to
be concerned, exclusively, with
self-preservation and expansion, like a
giant, malignant virus.”
Coercion and consent. The twin drivers of
U.S. power and global doom.
THE U.S. EMPIRE: FORM & FUNCTION
Contrary to the myth, which has been
eroded due to pressure from activists and
historians, the U.S. has always depended on
modes of violence to quell certain
populations, to expand from its original
thirteen colonies.
The violence included the murder of
indigenous peoples, with the enslavement of
Africans, and the repression of those who
would resist against the dominant social
order of private property, racialized
terror, and the right for businesses to
turn a profit above nearly all other
demands.
Historian Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz writes,
The origin of the United States
in settler colonialism—as an empire born
from the violent acquisition of
indigenous lands and the ruthless
devaluation of indigenous
lives—lends the country unique
characteristics that matter when
considering questions of how to unhitch
its future from its violent DNA.
To this day, particular populations in
the country, African Americans who are
working poor or working class, those who are
trying to create a more egalitarian society,
one that provides for what people need to
live, immigrant workers who stand up for
themselves against the tyranny of
agricultural capitalists, are oftentimes
suppressed through physical force.
This was most evident during last year’s
protests against the police, in which
protestors were pushed, mauled, and attacked
by law enforcement. Tear gas and Billy clubs
were unleashed the moment people spilled
into the streets, demanding that the social
order change. When people started to attack
businesses, the police responded with
extreme force, willing to crack some skulls
for some “peace”.
As the U.S. expanded its empire overseas,
violence remained a critical tool, as
countries hoping to rehabilitate and create
economies that European colonialists had
ruined, were one-by-one occupied and coerced
through other forms of U.S. force.
As countries in the Third World witnessed
the rise of socialists and Leftists, those
who identified the need for redistribution
of land and resources, and were willing to
challenge the dominant role that U.S. and
European companies played in their
respective nations, the U.S. helped lead
right-wing coups (like the one in Indonesia
in which were millions were killed
overnight), as well as apply other coercive
tactics, such as sanctions on Cuba following
their own revolution that overthrew the
U.S.-supported dictator, Fulgencio Bautista,
which have
prevented the Cuban economy from receiving
access to critical resources to mass
produce their own Covid-19 vaccine.
Of course, the U.S.’s brutal methods have
been in bloody display through its invasions
and occupations of territories overseas,
from the Philippines to Vietnam to Grenada
to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mai Elliot expressed in a piece about the
heavy toll of the Vietnam War
on the Vietnamese people at the hands of the
U.S. and its South Vietnamese trained
forces,
By the time of the cease-fire in
Vietnam in 1973, more than 10 million
South Vietnamese, mostly from rural
areas — well over half of the estimated
total population of 17 million — had
been driven from their homes by the war.
The United States Senate subcommittee on
refugees estimated that by 1974, over
1.4 million civilians had been killed
and wounded, and attributed over 50
percent of these casualties to the
firepower of American and South
Vietnamese forces. These displacements
and casualties were not just the
byproduct of warfare but also a result
of deliberate policies by the United
States and South Vietnamese governments.
Violence was directly harnessed by the
U.S., time and time again, to “pacify”
populations that needed to be held in check
for U.S. interests and that of its allies to
spread.
The existing social order we have now, of
global capitalism led by the U.S. and
supported by its allies across Europe and
Japan and other regions of the globe, would
not have been made possible without this
level of violence, coups or otherwise.
However, the U.S. has also achieved its
interests, such as maintaining a global
capitalist system that all countries must
either assimilate to or contend with in some
manner (even if that means deciding to not
liberalize their economies which leads to
losing access to critical resources, such as
foreign investment), by cultivating forms of
consent to its leadership.
As much as the U.S. relies on violence,
its empire does not function the same way as
did empires from Europe. For one thing, the
Europeans usually administered direct
control of their territories as a means of
pacification. Hence, English officers were
sent to India, to manage its bureaucracy and
day-to-day policy.
“Having set up the police, army, civil
service, and judiciary on African soil, the
colonizing powers were in a position to
intervene much more directly in the economic
life of the people than had been the case
previously”, the anti-colonialist scholar
Walter Rodney explained in his classic
survey of European dominance in Africa,
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
(a formidable text that everyone should
read).
The U.S., at first, would directly
administer policies in overseas territories,
as it did in its brutal occupation of the
Philippines and Haiti, but unlike the
Europeans, would look forward in drawing
back some of its military forces, and
instead, seek other ways to dominate and
influence the regions it once occupied.
The U.S. would accomplish its mission of
retaining influence by leaving behind
military bases scattered across the globe
(just in case it would need to help with
suppressing local revolts), as well as
seeking to shape the broader political
environment that countries must contend
with.
Bessner states,
The American empire functions in
a different way. It is an empire of
bases, pinprick bases all around the
world. It is an empire of institutions
that tries to govern global trade,
global security. It doesn’t exactly
mirror the empires of old.
U.S. foreign policymakers viewed its
interests as being tied with the creation of
a global capitalist order, especially during
the Cold War. This is different from the era
of European colonization where indeed,
Europeans would collude to suppressed
non-white populations globally, but
ultimately, would continue to compete
against one another for territory. Such
competition would lead to bloody skirmishes
and wars, whether it was the British
fighting the Dutch “settlers” in South
Africa to bloody battles between the French,
the Belgian and the British across Africa
more generally to scrambles over territory
during WWI between the British, the French,
the Germans, and Italians.
The U.S., as it emerged relatively
unscathed from WWII, viewed itself as the
vanguard of global capital, and desired
others to join its mission of creating a
global order that rewarded countries who
liberalized their economies, from Europe to
Japan to parts of Latin America and Asia,
and over time, parts of Africa. Thus, it set
upon creating global institutions, along
with its allies in Europe and Japan, that
could shape the globe for global capitalist
interests overall.
Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin write in
The Making of Global Capitalism: The
Political Economy of American Empire,
The wide international range of US
firms, as well as the relative size and
importance of US markets, gave American
state authorities ‘tremendous leverage
in pressuring foreign firms and
regulatory authorities’ to adopt these
rules and practices. But the inherent
limits on the extraterritorial
application of US law in a world of
formally sovereign states also gave rise
to extensive coordination of national
regulations through international
institutions like the newly created WTO,
the World Bank, the Bank of
International Settlements, and the IMF.
Essentially, the U.S., knowing the limits
of directly administering control overseas,
sought to apply pressure on countries
following WWII, including countries that
were now independent from Europe, by
creating a global capitalist system that
horded access to critical investments and
resources, such as loans and foreign
investment.
Immanuel Ness, professor of political
science at Brooklyn college of the City
University of New York, and author of
Organizing Insurgency: Workers Movements in
the Global South, explained how the
U.S. and its allies were successful in
creating a global economic system that
prioritized the interests of multinational
companies, of capitalists worldwide. After
all, following the end of WWII, much of the
globe had been ravaged, either by the war
directly or by the legacy of European and
U.S. imperialism (i.e. Latin America).
Most importantly, countries in Asia,
Africa and Latin America, lacking the
industrial capacity to extract and
manufacture their own goods and products, or
in some cases, still relying on a global
marketplace to sell their goods to,
desperately needed financial help from
Europe and the U.S. In turn, the U.S. and
its allies created the WTO, the World Bank,
the IMF, as a way of sustaining this
inequality in terms of access to the market
and to industrial capacity. Desperate
countries could either agree to the demands
that the U.S. global order wanted, such as
allowing for multinational companies to
extract mineral wealth, or receiving loans
to perhaps sustain some financial stability,
or face economic marginalization, such as
being denied access to sell consumer goods
to Europe and the U.S.
“If you opt out of the system as a whole,
one will end up being isolated
internationally,” Ness said.
Countries such as Cuba, Iran, and
Venezuela are examples of this dynamic, in
which nations are denied access to the
global market for following a different
economic model. After the fall of the
U.S.S.R and the Eastern Bloc, the dominance
of the global capitalist system that the
U.S. and its allies had sustained grew even
stronger, since countries now lack any real
alternative to the global capitalist market.
Thus, countries like Cuba and Venezuela are
struggling tremendously, having been denied
access to the world market and in the case
of Venezuela, literally
having a significant portion of its reserves
seized by the U.S. and other global
banking interests.
In the end, the U.S. has created a global
capitalist system in which it doesn’t need
to rely on invasion or occupation to punish
countries that step out of line.
The U.S. achieved this global capitalist
order through explicit violence, but also,
through aligning with/supporting local
interests across the globe who also believed
that the U.S. would protect them from the
so-called scourge of communism.
Consequently, when we discuss the coups
that the U.S. supported, such coups were a
combination of U.S. tactical support, such
as providing weaponry or training to those
would undertake the coup, but were also made
possible because there were constituencies
in those respective nations, like in Chile
and other parts of Latin America, who also
sought to maintain a hierarchical political
system to preserve their own social and
economic interests.
Unlike European empires, the U.S. leans
more heavily on local allies to administer
control and leverage power for the broader
interests of capital. For the coups to
succeed in places like Chile and Indonesia,
the U.S. developed connections with local
constituencies, whether it was the most
regressive elements in society, or liberal
capitalists fearing a so-called communist
takeover. Figures like Pinochet did
represent a constituency of lunatics and
sociopaths (a.k.a. the rich and segments of
the middle class) but nonetheless, a
constituency did exist, that the U.S. was
more than eager to side with and bolster.
“And yet in Chile, as much as one-third
of the population stood with Pinochet to the
end,” stated a
report by NPR (the leader of
finding both sides on every issue) on
the legacy of Pinochet in Chile.
To this day, this strategy continues, as
demonstrated by the U.S. support of figures
such as Jair Bolsonaro and Rodrigo Duterte,
both of whom are exceedingly repulsive, and
yet, still retain some measure of
support/constituency for their horrid
actions.
Again, such figures do not necessarily
represent what the majority of people desire
in Brazil (Bolsonaro is slated to lose to
Lula in the upcoming presidential elections)
or in the Philippines, but they do inspire a
level
of loyalty and support among segments of the
population, such as among social
conservatives (anti-feminists and
anti-queer) and of course, among the wealthy
and segments of the middle class and the
more conservative elements of the working
class as well. Indeed, there was rampant
support for even Duterte’s so-called war on
drugs, which has meant a war on the poor,
and the murder of countless people,
including addicts.
Even after the dreadful mismanagement of
Covid-19 in the Philippines, there is still
a constituency supporting Duterte, as Ted
Regencia at Al Jazeera notes,
writing, “Yet
Duterte has continued to be hugely popular
during his last 11 months. In a Pulse Asia
survey on vice presidential contenders
conducted this month, Duterte came out tops,
while a Publicus Asia survey in July gave
him an approval rating of 58 percent and a
trust rating of 55 percent.”
In turn, the U.S. has continued to also
support for the Philippines government,
which includes continuing to train its
military.
“While the
Biden administration has declared human
rights the centerpiece of its foreign
policy, it has carefully avoided publicly
calling out the Philippines over its
controversial drug war and
other alleged abuses,” Julie McCarthy at
NPR writes.
Despite the abuses under Bolsonaro and
Duterte, and other U.S. allies, such as
Narendra Modi of India, which far exceed
that of countries like Cuba, they are not
excluded from the global market. They are
not sanctioned. They are not facing intense
economic or political pressure by the U.S.
and its allies.
Overall, through this global capitalist
system, local capitalists in countries like
Brazil, the Philippines, Bangladesh and
Indonesia are provided contracts by U.S. and
other multinational companies to build the
factories and to reap some profit as well.
Through the global capitalist system, local
governments feel they have very little
option other than allow particular interests
to continue to extract resources without
paying a living wage to local workers, like
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Thus, those who would support this
extractive process seek to preserve it and
over time, receive some revenue for
themselves as well.
Through this global capitalist system,
elites are allowed to reap some financial
reward by also having access to the
financial hubs in the U.S. and Europe. Even
for countries as poor as India, the
rising crop of elites find value in the way
in which the global economic system is
currently structured, as they’re also
allowed to store their wealth in the same
tax-havens and financial hubs as elites in
the U.S and Europe.
“The capital that they hold is not held
in New Delhi or Mumbai,” Ness expressed, “It
is held in London and New York more likely.”
Thus, without ever having to invade,
occupy or bomb, the U.S. has found other
ways to maintain a global capitalist system
beneficial for its interests, from building
alliances among the sociopathic/selfish to
rewarding those who follow its leadership,
ultimately willing to hand off the role of
destroyer for others to fill.
COERCION & CONSENT
Michael Brenes, lecturer in history at
Yale University and author of For Might
and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the
Remaking of American Democracy, has
examined the incentives on the domestic
front that allow for the U.S. empire to grow
and expand.
“These capitalist interests who shape the
military can’t just function through sheer
hegemony, through their capitalist power,”
Brenes expressed to me in a recent interview
about the subject of the U.S. military,
adding, “They have to have people acquiesce
to their power. They have to have people buy
into, implicitly or explicitly, into the
ways in which the military shapes their
lives.”
Again, there is always a level of
violence undergirding U.S. empire at home as
well, from the killing of various indigenous
nations to the violent repression of Left
anti-imperialist forces, such as the Black
Panther Party and others who found meaning
in the Viet Minh struggle for freedom, as
well as anyone who sough to side with the
international forces fighting against U.S.
might.
Yet, as detailed by Brenes in his work,
and also, expressed in the work of
historians such as Mike Davis and Nelson
Lichenstein, there has also been a
constituency that has grown, who will
continue to mobilize against attempts as
basic as even shaving off a few million from
the military’s budget, let alone the
shutdown of bases abroad.
The coalition of actors that would over
time be the ones to “defend” the
military-industrial complex from reform
started to take shape during WWII. It was
during the war that the U.S. government, led
by New Dealers, who developed jobs programs
to alleviate the high levels of unemployment
caused by the Great Depression. Although the
New Deal was revelatory in that it did shift
toward more pro-worker policies that
would’ve been unheard of just a few years
prior, much of its policies did not
necessarily seek to create a social order
beyond capitalism. Hence, in the factories,
it did encourage unionization but also,
hoped that unions and bosses could find a
“compromise” during moments of potential
upheaval.
Similarly, U.S. liberals viewed the
burgeoning defense industry as a means of
also solving unemployment. Rather than
create more government jobs programs,
policymakers awarded contacts to defense
companies so they could hire from the large
pool of the unemployed, or those struggling,
including white women, and generally,
non-white workers.
“[Defense contractors] start getting
money for shipbuilding and submarine
building and the New Deal creates jobs for
defense spending,” Brenes explains,
“Forty-six percent of GDP is through defense
spending.”
By the time the war is over, a
significant portion of the employed are now
working in defense industries, in New York,
in places in the south, but also, in states
like California, which are seen as booming.
As Brenes details, there was a fear among
policymakers that if such defense industries
were drawn back to level prior to the war
effort, the unemployment would shoot back up
again.
At the same time, and this would be a
recurring problem, there was no discussion
at the national level about how else to
employ people. The Left was relatively weak,
now facing the Red Scare, and the New Deal
liberal establishment was very much
ensconced in the belief that funding for the
U.S. military was critical.
Samuel Moyn writes in Dissent,
“Cold War
liberals put their faith in the military,
and depended on spending related to it to
deliver social benefits—employment,
economic growth, civic purpose—in the
absence of a broader welfare state.”
Or, as Brenes explains, “There was no
countervailing force” to the consensus
forming in the political establishment nor
to the growing constituency of the defense
industries that benefited greatly during
WWII.
Indeed, when the U.S. did send troops
into Korea, which was pivotal in harkening
the new era of the Cold War between the U.S.
and the U.S.S.R. and communism worldwide,
this set of interests generated the momentum
and resources it had already had to grow the
military budget, to maintain and expand
defense contracts, to maintain and sustain
the various think tanks that were willing
and ready to justify U.S. Cold War strategy.
Basically, there was a constituency that
was able to mobilize effectively, through
the connections it had made during WWII, but
also due to the lack of viable opposition to
its demands, which New Dealers were happy in
elevating and working with for their own
political agenda of keeping unemployment
low, and not expanding social democracy any
further.
This constituency would obviously
continue to grow during the Cold War,
according to Brenes and solidify its roots
within the halls of Congress.
When the U.S.S.R. did finally collapse,
this constituency mobilized, which included
workers who were (understandably so),
desperate to keep their jobs, especially
considering how neoliberalism had succeeded
in cutting away any real form of social
safety net that people could rely on, or had
reduced the jobs that were available more
broadly to low-wage occupations.
Those who mobilized, included the
white-collar engineer as well as the
blue-collar on the ground floor actively
putting together the weaponry that the
company would sell to the U.S. government or
to allies abroad.
“They mobilize under their labor unions,
they seek politicians out who can lobby
Congress or get Congress to change, to stop
cuts to defense programs that are going to
impact them,” said Brenes.
Hence, following the so-called end of the
Cold War, the U.S. military’s budget has
grown, with interests embedded within the
halls of power ready to lobby, from the CEOs
and to segments of the workforce, to seek
out future threats, from “jihadis” during
the War on Terror, and now, China.
Writing in the Christian Science
Monitor, liberal
economist Robert Reich explains how robust
this constituency that would be against
military cuts remains.
Over 1,400,000 Americans are now on
active duty; another 833,000 are in the
reserves, many full time. Another
1,600,000 Americans work in companies
that supply the military with everything
from weapons to utensils. (I’m not even
including all the foreign contractors
employing non-US citizens.)
If we didn’t have this giant military
jobs program, the U.S. unemployment rate
would be over 11.5 percent today instead of
9.5 percent.
Therefore, policymakers in Washington
have now a vested interest in sustaining the
current levels of U.S. spending on the
military out of fears of jeopardizing the
economy and having to face off against a
significant constituency of people who would
be willing to defend the status quo.
In early September of this year alone,
the U.S. House of Representatives Armed
Services Committee supported raising the
military budget by another $25 billion in a
time when rent moratoriums are being
lifted and most Americans are struggling
financially.
Further, there has also been a group of
lawmakers who have been drawn closer into
the orbit of defense contractors and
pro-military defense big spenders. This,
obviously, includes lawmakers in Congress
who now have stocks in major defense
companies.
“According to a Sludge review of
financial disclosures, 51 members of
Congress and their spouses own between $2.3
and $5.8 million worth of stocks
in companies that are among the top 30
defense contractors in the world” Donald
Shaw and David Moore write at The
American Prospect, adding, “The House
Foreign Affairs Committee oversees arms
controls and exports, yet at least four of
its members have investments in defense
companies whose foreign sales fall under
their jurisdiction.”
Last year, the defense companies
in the U.S. had sold $175 billion worth
of weaponry to other countries, which was a
3% increase from 2019.
According to Stephen Losley at
Military.com, the “revolving door”
of influence between lawmakers and the
U.S. defense industry is across partisan
lines, and includes not just critical
figures on committees, but also those who
directly advise the executive on military
strategy and other military-related issues.
The practice appears unlikely to
change significantly under the Biden
administration. The report notes that
while President Joe Biden issued an
order restricting officials who leave
the White House from quickly lobbying
the executive branch or registering as
foreign agents, several of his
appointees have ties to the defense
industry. Defense Secretary Lloyd
Austin, for example, sat on Raytheon’s
board before joining the administration.
Finally, there is also, the fact that
some Congresspeople do rely on the defense
industry to provide jobs in their districts,
in California, in the south, in areas in the
Northeast and mid-Atlantic (i.e. parts of
Maryland and Virginia), what Brenes has
called the “gunbelt”. In 2012, when
President Obama did float the idea of
cutting military spending, those who
would be against such an effort knew there
was a worker constituency they could
mobilize and wield against such a
proposal. At the time, Dina Rasor at
Truthout wrote,
One of the most vocal defenders of
the Pentagon budget is Rep. Buck McKeon
(R-California), chairman of the House
Armed Services Committee. He insisted,
along with Pentagon companies such as
Lockheed, that according to federal law,
these large Pentagon contractors would
have to send out thousands of warning
pink slips to defense workers across the
country that their jobs may be
eliminated just a few weeks before the
presidential election. I am sure that
they thought that that would put
President Obama in a box of facing
voters in key states such as Virginia
and Colorado because possible defense
cuts would also mean pink slips,
anticipated job losses and panic at the
polls.
As the U.S. now begins to apply pressure
on China and portray China as an
“existential” threat to all that is holy,
one must trace the roots of this new Cold
War to the fact that there is a
constituency, a coalition of material
interests, who depend on war, including a
segment of the U.S. workforce.
“Once these institutions are created,
they don’t have an interest in getting
undone,” Brenes said, “There’s a material
basis for them to function, to seek out new
threats.”
The U.S. Empire as Immediate and
Distant
The ability for the U.S. military and
defense industries to have become such a
major force in U.S. politics was not
inevitable. Such things never are.
However, understanding how the power of
the U.S. military is rooted in
constituencies as well as violence overseas
and domestic should show us the
necessity/importance/fundamental need of
lobbying for particular interests and
organizing for those interests in society.
The fact remains, those who benefited
from the U.S. military largesse and its
interventions abroad, had organized
themselves effectively, to get what they
want from government, while unfortunately,
our side is still very much trying to build
our own capacity to serve as a
“countervailing force”. Certainly, as the
anti-imperialist Left, we have many more
obstacles to navigate, including political
repression by both liberals and
conservatives who very much share a belief
in U.S. exceptionalism. However, this
doesn’t mean that there aren’t any
strategies we could employ to beat back the
scourge of U.S. empire.
In fact, the number one thing is to
organize into institutional entities that
could increase influence in government at
the national level. As Brenes argues, this
includes supporting elected officials such
as Ilhan Omar and others on the Squad, so
they can raise such issues surrounding U.S.
imperial ambitions and harm, as they’ve
already done, as exemplified by Omar’s
interrogation of the
deplorable Elliot Abrams, the man
responsible for Reagan’s support of
right-wing death squads in Central
America.
There needs to be also actions beyond
simply protest. People must be organized
into parties, especially revolutionary ones
willing to link people across the country
who believe in cutting the U.S. military
budget as well as others who may be
interested but haven’t been approached yet,
such as refugees and immigrants from places
across Asia and Africa.
“The way to develop a political movement
is not through disallowing party
organization,” Ness explained, “Its by
building that organization.”
Essentially, our own constituency must be
forged and that cannot emerge spontaneously,
especially when so many Americans already
feel overwhelmed by their most immediate
interests to think about foreign policy.
The irony is, that as much as U.S. empire
has been a money pit and has survived by
offering up particular material incentives
to people, it has also relied on American
ignorance and distance from foreign policy.
As much as the U.S. has relied on
occupations of particular countries and
regions, it also very much has become a
leaner machine, in which those who are in
its immediate orbit, including workers and
members of the military, have shrunk.
Most people in the U.S., as Bessner
explains, do not have an immediate
face-to-face interaction with the military,
especially after the 1970s.
In responding to why the U.S. empire has
been able to avoid political pressure
against it that are effective, or in
generating mass anger, Bessner explained,
I think the answers fairly clear,
which is the creation of the
all-volunteer force in 1970s. It removed
most Americans from a personal
relationship with the empire, unless you
come from a military family or are in
the military, or work for a defense
contractor, you don’t necessarily feel
the empire, its affects, what it takes
to manage it, etc.
Of course, this does not mean that the
U.S. empire does not have an affect on most
Americans. The spending on the military
takes away spending on more important and
necessary policies, such as healthcare, and
housing, among other priorities. But also,
the fact that the pro-U.S. military spending
constituency is so much more mobilized
within the halls of government,
conversations about what policies the
country needs are always impacted,
oftentimes negatively.
For instance, as the Biden administration
seeks to compete
with China (spurred on by the pro-U.S.
military crowd), as Biden himself has
continuously spoke of in his major
speeches, the range of policies that are
seen as “legitimate” will exclude those that
do not directly connect with this mission of
“taking on” China. So yes, infrastructure
spending is encouraged, since that means
enhancing U.S. business interests (better
roads, better ports, better global supply
chains). Perhaps wage increases, to an
extent, so that workers will return to work
or be willing to work longer hours.
But policies like universal healthcare
will remain off the table. Defunding the
police will also be considered as a
backburner issue, until another election
cycle. And of course, ideas that are
actually socialist and just, such as workers
in control of industry, will be entirely
missing, and have been, through this
negative effect that the pro-U.S. empire
discourse has on our policy discussions.
“It definitely shrinks the conversation
because all the programs you want to pass is
justified by how you want to provide
security,” Brenes expressed.
Hence, a countervailing force must be
developed, through elections of politicians
that could bring forth these ideas to a mass
audience.
Also, when it comes to developing that
countervailing force, we must find ways to
break apart the pro-U.S. military
constituency itself, especially with workers
in the industry. This doesn’t necessarily
mean getting every worker onto our side, but
we cannot simply ignore those who do work in
the defense industry currently, since they
have been and will continue to be the ones
to also mobilize against us, and again, for
some understandable reasons.
As Brenes discusses in his work, when
issues like U.S. empire have brought up in
the past, especially during the Vietnam War,
a significant number of working people were
split on the issue, of course. The fact that
workers in the defense industry sided with
the war effort was not necessarily about
believing in U.S. empire wholeheartedly. In
fact, those workers and their leadership in
the AFL-CIO were very much driven by the
immediate concerns they had about their
jobs, about the financial security they
hoped to maintain. Even workers who were
against the war because they had someone
fighting or may have been sympathetic to the
Viet Minh cause for independence (who
wouldn’t, honestly), were incentivized to
save their jobs and therefore, believe in
the war.
This incentive obviously still holds.
Brenes states,
Many workers in the defense economy
are concerned about the fate of their
jobs long term. They think, ‘I need to
feed my family now, I can’t worry about
I need to make sure I have the ability
to maintain my overall economic status,
to pay my mortgage.
Until the Left can provide different
incentives, including policies that promise
some form of stability when the defense
industry does shrink (and eventually,
disappear entirely), this constituency will
continue to pose as a force against the
progress we need.
Furthermore, the Left must also find ways
to forge solidarity and ties beyond our
borders, with forces internationally if we
any hope of building pressure on the
behemoth that is the U.S. empire. So long as
forces which are amenable to U.S. global
interests exist, they will receive support
from the U.S. and their allies, and of
course, in turn, develop the constituencies
they can so they can maintain their rule
over the rest of society, as in the
Philippines, as in Indonesia, as in parts of
Latin America, like in Colombia and now much
of Central America.
Conversely, those forces that would
objectively benefit from the ending of
global capital, and the regional monsters it
produces, will continue to be outmatched and
outmaneuvered, even when they may form a
larger group within a country or region.
Hence, such forces also need our material
support as the U.S. Left, whether it is
sending delegates as the DSA has done to
places like Venezuela, to meet with and
discuss with the government that’s under
siege there, or it is forging bonds across
radical labor unions, as Ness would argue.
There must be internationalism on the
Left in the U.S. with forces battling the
U.S. imperial death machine.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. once
recognized, in his final year prior to him
being assassinated, there are forces aching
to be freed from the U.S. and its middlemen
of doom. There are forces struggling to be
free, as in the Viet Minh struggle against
the French and the U.S.
In his speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” he
stated,
After the French were defeated, it
looked as if independence and land
reform would come again through the
Geneva Agreement. But instead there came
the United States, determined that Ho
should not unify the temporarily divided
nation, and the peasants watched again
as we supported one of the most vicious
modern dictators, our chosen man,
Premier Diem. The peasants watched and
cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out
all opposition, supported their
extortionist landlords, and refused even
to discuss reunification with the North.
The peasants watched as all of this was
presided over by United States influence
and then by increasing numbers of United
States troops who came to help quell the
insurgency that Diem’s methods had
aroused. When Diem was overthrown they
may have been happy, but the long line
of military dictators seemed to offer no
real change, especially in terms of
their need for land and peace.
A Left that does not move strategically,
that does not take seriously solidarity
across borders, a Left that is more about
spontaneity than about developing power will
always lose to the forces that already
exist, the forces that will persist in
making sure the bombs are dropped, the tanks
are made and sold, and that our society is
shaped by war even when we’re miles away
from the frontlines.
Notes.
[1] This article includes insights from
original interviews I’ve conducted with
Daniel Bessner, Immanuel Ness, and Michael
Brenes.