American Empire: Part Two

It started inauspiciously at the Bretton Woods conference but this is often forgotten. Instead when many of us think of the unbridled use of force that marks the start of an imperial expansion, we think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is certainly the second key event in the foundation of the US Empire. It was the ultimate expression of imperial power. A symbol of unrestrained global dominance. It also more tangibly created a US strategic bridgehead in East Asia, Japan became a home to US troops. Yet the use of the bomb was the apex of US power that would never be repeated, and hopefully never will. The United States lost its nuclear monopoly in 1949 and now Nuclear proliferation is a serious concern to the Pentagon as it threatens a key pillar of US power, its first-strike capability.

The first event that demonstrated the limits of US imperial power was the Korean War. An American client the Republic of Korea almost ceased to exist as Kim Il Sung launched a surprise invasion on 25th June 1950. The 'Police Action' the United States launched to defend its client resulted in the liberation of South Korea. Yet America sought to expand its imperial dominance of the Korean peninsula by conquering the North, this choice immediately demonstrated the limits of US power as China intervened on behalf of their North Korean allies. The war lasted three years and ended in stalemate. The leader of US forces until 1951, General Douglas MacArthur, wanted to use Nuclear weapons to break the stalemate. He was a man before his time, a proto-Neocon; a man of great imperial hubris. If he had become president the world may have been annihilated before the end of his first term. Yet the man in the White House at that time was a sane man of Realpolitik. President Truman who is hated by history, saw the immense danger of using Nuclear weapons. It would set a dangerous precedent, and could potentially spark a Third World War. It would create immense insecurity in the international system, Soviet clients would fear the irrational and rampant US imperial hoards. The Soviets may feel obligated to retaliate. Thus Truman did not use Nuclear weapons in Korea, nor did his successor Dwight Eisenhower.

It demonstrated an unwillingness to use scorched earth policies that are the hallmark of absolute imperial domination. If we look at any of the empires of world history, for instance Ancient Rome, the Mongolian Yuan empire, or the French Empire, their was an understanding that overwhelming and brutal force would be used if necessary in order to maintain power. Yet Truman cringed at the thought, he was not prepared to be an American Genghis Khan. Yet this was not the case for all American Imperial presidents. In the fight for 'freedom', anything and everything was on the table. This is not to say that in other ways America didn't use such tactics in Korea. As Bruce Cumings points out, Napalm was first used by the US army in Korea; we usually associate Napalm with Vietnam, but it was actually used against innocent North Korean civilians before the Vietnamese.

Eisenhower's presidency ended with a prescient, prophetic vision of what would become undoing of this growing Empire of freedom. In his farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower warned of the danger of a permanent military-industrial complex which sought war not as a last resort but as an economic imperative. This complex is still with us today, in fact it is far larger today than it was when Eisenhower was warning of it. It remains a major reason why America fights so many wars; American imperial power is expressed not merely to maintain the perception of its hegemony but also in order to continue the flow of dollars from the US taxpayer to the massive arms cartels.

Interest groups are the natural product of a pluralistic society like the United States. Interest groups include unions, parties, demographics, and corporations. They shape the political process in their favour through lobbying. Lobbying usually involves what a preacher would call sin, what I would call legalised corruption. In order to demonstrate to a politician or a bureaucrat the value of their own concerns and interests, interest groups usually have to appeal to the base desires of their politicians. The military-industrial complex is no different in this regard and its lobbying pressure is crucial in the rise of American empire. But there is a degree of mistaking cause for effect amongst some left-wing scholars. What seems clear is that the threat from Soviet expansion necessitated a massive increase in military spending in order to deter Soviet expansion. The lobby itself grew from increased defence procurement, rather than being an attempt to merely expand the defence budget, it was an attempt by individual companies to expand their market share. Yet we must also remember that increases in military spending usually coincide with the perception of increased insecurity. So therefore it would be natural for arms companies to attempt to build a sense of insecurity in order to increase the size of their market (in this case the US government).

Much is made of the corrupting influence on the contemporary American political process. Both Left and Right blame what they perceive to be the interest groups of the latter for the failure of the US government in pet policy arenas. Here are two examples to illustrate the point. The Left blames 'Big Oil' for the current energy crisis that America faces, this crisis is manifold, multi-dimensional; its the crisis facing an society founded on industrialised mass consumption. Furthermore in the age of plastics, and the age of the internal combustion engine, oil is a necessary foundation to our consumption. Even if we ignore/curtail frivolous consumption on consumer goods like IPODs, and stop using plastic packaging, and walk everywhere the problem remains. Freight uses oil, and plastics are an irreplaceable component of 21st Century high-tech industry. Sadly it is not so simple to blame the Oil lobby for these problems. Oil's stranglehold on the world is not founded on lobbying; country's without a Oil lobby still have massive oil dependency issues. Rather the lobby can only exacerbate the problem for example by demanding less rigorous pollution standards.

The Right makes a similar mistake. The permissive liberalism at the heart of US immigration policy has resulted in an explosion of illegal immigration. Undoubtedly the Latino immigrant community is a very powerful lobby with the Democratic Party. They vote Democrat by large margins, and they have become increasingly important in winning elections for the Democrats. Nonetheless whilst this is certainly the case, we must not forget who illegal immigration actually benefits. Illegal immigrants are usually employed at very low wages in unskilled jobs; the wages they are paid no legal worker would accept. Furthermore given the expectations engineered by the post-war boom of American consumer capitalism its easy to understand why a white American would not settle for such pay. However a Mexican citizen with a family in Mexico who need cash to survive (in a country with a failed state) such pay is enough. The American system itself has a great use for this labour power. To simply blame the Latino vote is obviously very simplistic.

This brings us back to interest group politics. Are interest groups the reason why the American empire became chronically overstretched; are they the reason that the United States cannot afford to provide jobs to over 10% of its citizens. Are they the reason why over 50 million Americans do not have health insurance? The simple answer is yes and no. Who decides government policy? Politician, bureaucrats and their advisers. Interest groups of course shape the perceptions of politicians, but their ideologies and circumstances are also equally important. The current structure of the US health industry for instance can be traced back to Richard Nixon. He made a decision to go with the market because of his ideology, lobbying from friends in the health industry but also circumstances. The US budget was overstretched in the early 1970s, it seemed fiscally advisable to allow the market to sort out provision when the alternative was to further strangle the US taxpayer. In retrospect this was the wrong decision, but it probably was not made out of malice, but out of pragmatism.