The US Has Inherited the Role European Colonizers Played for Hundreds of Years

From [HERE] How can it be just that so few dictate the lives of so many? And I’m not referring to the 1 percent and the 99 percent. I’m speaking of the voting population in the United States and its minions Canada and Britain. Meanwhile, the billions of people around the world whose lives are directly impacted by the decisions made by elected officials in these wealthy nations have virtually no voice. The US Empire is far from democratic. It is authoritarian! It is imperialist! It is unjust! And a revolution is needed.

In the 2012 presidential election, 121 million Americans voted, which constituted 57 percent of the voting age population. This voter turnout, while not a significant majority, nevertheless provides legitimacy for the US political system, particularly in the eyes of many Americans.

But the political decisions made by elected US officials reach far beyond that nation’s borders. Through its foreign policy and its dominant role in international institutions such as the United Nations Security Council, NATO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, the United States impacts the lives of virtually everyone on the planet. In other words, the electoral choices of 121 million Americans directly impact the lives of billions of people around the world. How is this democratic?

National borders are repeatedly decimated in the name of ‘free market’ capitalism so that corporations can freely move their capital and profits around the globe to take advantage of cheap labour and natural resources, particularly in the global South. But while the economy is becoming increasingly globalized, democracy remains rooted in the nation-state.

But all nations are not equal. The United States has inherited the role that European colonizers played for hundreds of years. And like the ruling powers in the old colonial system, the United States wields a disproportionate amount of political, economic and military power in contemporary imperialism. As a result of this dominance, 121 million American voters hold the fate of billions in their hands every four years.

But the fate of the world’s population is the farthest thing from the minds of most US voters at election time. They are primarily focused on their own immediate needs such as jobs, taxes, security and other issues that they perceive to be of importance to their daily lives. They are not concerned with—or fail to see—how the political, economic and military policies implemented globally by the government they elect negatively impact many people around the world. Consequently, there is little chance of Americans voting against what they perceive to be their own interests for the benefit of a majority of the world’s population.

But what happens when those people negatively impacted by US policies attempt to take matters into their own hands and challenge the undemocratic US imperialist model? Washington inevitably responds in violent ways to defend the status quo. This is why so many people around the world do not believe that the United States is a force for good. In fact, in a 2013 WIN/Gallup poll conducted in 68 countries, the United States was overwhelmingly viewed as the greatest threat to world peace—as it is each year the survey is conducted.

The American Empire

Washington’s global political dominance manifests itself through military and economic support to allied governments regardless of how corrupt, undemocratic and violent they may be in order to defend US interests. These interests primarily consist of enabling the profit-taking activities of multinational corporations and ensuring a continuation of the consumer lifestyle enjoyed by many Americans.

The consequences of prioritizing corporate profits and consumer lifestyles in wealthy nations have been devastating for many around the world. According to the World Health Organization, more than 10 million people die annually in Latin America, Africa and Asia due to a lack of access to adequate healthcare and medicines. This is the inevitable result of the capitalist system, which prioritizes profits over everything else.

For example, it is more profitable for pharmaceutical companies to produce ‘lifestyle’ drugs to address such issues as baldness and other non-life threatening conditions for people in wealthy nations who can afford to purchase them than to manufacture essential medicines for the poor who do not constitute a viable market. The inevitable consequence is structural genocide; a tragedy that has be made more visible by the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

When governments do come to power and challenge US interests then Washington inevitably responds with economic sanctions, support for a military coup and, if necessary, direct military intervention. The objective is to ensure that the capitalist model is the dominant social model throughout the world. And in order to ensure that this model is accepted as legitimate it is crucial that populations around the world internalize Western liberal values. This is precisely why the ongoing US military interventions in the Islamic world are, despite the rhetoric emanating from the White House, a war against Islam. The acceptance of Western liberal values is essential for the perpetuation of capitalism and many of these individualistic values contravene some of the collectivist values found in Islam.

The ongoing military interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia are a continuation of the empire-building that began in 1492 after Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ the Americas. The values and cultural practices of the indigenous peoples of the Americas were not aligned with the liberal and Christian religious values prominent in Europe, particularly Enlightenment thought, which provided the philosophical foundation for capitalism. Consequently, those indigenous that resisted—and many who didn’t resist—the imposition of European values onto their cultures were slaughtered.

Most of those that survived were effectively interned in reservations and generation after generation subjected to forced assimilation through a Eurocentric education system. Similarly in Africa and Asia, European colonialism imposed liberal ideas and Christianity on peoples in order to inculcate them with the Western values essential to validate the capitalist system that drove the colonial project.

More recent attempts to challenge this imperialist process have similarly been met with violence. The United States has overthrown virtually all governments that have challenged its hegemony. Just a partial list of countries whose governments were overthrown by US-backed coups or military interventions in recent decades includes Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), South Vietnam (1963), Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965), Chile (1973), Argentina (1976), Haiti (1991 and 2004), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Honduras (2009) and Libya (2011). Some of these governments were democratically-elected in free and fair elections. [MORE]