What’s it all about, Alfie? Biden's "Big Stick" Foreign Policy

 Question: What do the following have in common?

·       US push to expand NATO to the borders of Russia;

·       Massive military aid to the Ukraine with the admitted goal of “bleeding the Russians dry”;

·       The unprecedented naval war games in the Pacific, with which the US, NATO and our Pacific partners are attempting to send a message to China;

·       Biden’s trip to the Middle East, including a stop in that paragon of democracy, Saudi Arabia, where, in a photo op, he fist-bumped the Saudi prince and laid out his vision of a future for the region, stating “The United States is clear-eyed about the challenges in the Middle East and about where we have the greatest capacity to help drive positive outcomes … We will not walk away and leave the vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran”;

·       The $840 billion Pentagon budget, which keeps growing, like the cancer it is and which is already more than 10 time the military budget of Russia;

·       The Pentagon's plans to modernize its ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) with a new generation named the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, or GBSD at an estimated cost of $364 billion (and we all know what happens to estimated costs, particularly when it come to the military).

If you haven’t been connecting the dots, and the media, including much of the “progressive” media, certainly hasn’t, I suggest you might start by reading my blog posts on the history of The Empire of Liberty for the backstory. I would argue that it all makes sense when we follow the development of the US as an expansionist empire based on white supremacy. What follows here is more or less an outline of the rest of that backstory. Hopefully I will get a chance to finish the series in the next few weeks.

The US (The Empire of Liberty) emerged from WWII as the world’s dominant economic, political and military power and as a result was able to forge a postwar system that benefitted it under the alleged framework of promoting democracy and economic development of the Global South. This new, US dominated, order, which replaced the old colonial order imposed by the British (and to a lesser extent other Western European countries), replicated many of its features, in particular its assumption of white supremacy and its willingness to use force to protect its economic interests, which were considerable and growing, thanks to globalization.

Despite its power, the Empire of Liberty immediately faced a challenge to its dominant position from the Soviet Union. When the Soviet armies liberated much of central Europe from the Nazis, they brought these areas into what was essentially their empire that, although much weaker than that of the Empire of Liberty, still represented a challenge total US hegemony, particularly because it claimed to champion an ideology in direct contradiction to capitalism. When, in 1949 the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon and a socialist revolution in China, the world’s most populous country, allied itself with the Soviets, this became a major threat to the Empire of Liberty and the Empire responded by extending its policy of containment to the Global South.  As a result, the Cold War would become hot, in the form of proxy wars.

Although the Cold War’s origins were mostly in Central Europe (hence the formation of North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949), as colonies of the US’s European allies began to struggle for independence (both political and economic), they frequently turned to the Chinese and Soviets for support. The US transformed itself into a military bastion in order to contain what it viewed as the spread of communism, even in situations where the forces struggling for liberation eschewed communism. Anyway, what really needed to be “contained” was the threat to US and its Western European allies’ ability to exploit the Third World/Global South.

For the next 40+ years the US intervened in the internal affairs of nations in Central & South America, Asia and Africa to maintain its definition of “a rules-based order”. It created the largest “peace” time military in history and a far-flung apparatus to subvert national autonomy including the overthrow of governments it didn’t approve of. It utilized its economic power and that of the post-WWII economic institutions it had created to promote a model of globalization beneficial to US/European/Japanese capitalist interests, in what can only be described as a neocolonial empire. And, if all else failed, it sent 550,000 soldiers equipped with the most destructive weapons ever used, to project its power in a small Asian country – unsuccessfully I might add.

The collapse of the Soviet Empire in the early 1990s, once more left the US as the only super power (read empire) and many naïve commentators believed that we were destined to a new period – a Pax (or was it Pox) Americana. But the Cold War never really ended, it simply morphed into the War of Terrorism, a very one-sided war to continue imposing US/NATO order throughout the Global South. It has been described as the Forever War … because it is, although now that war is being subsumed by the conflict between the US/NATO and the rising power of China, with its junior partner, Russia., laying the basis for a renewed Cold War.

Therefore, to analyze what’s happening today, we need to understand that the Empire of Liberty is reacting to the threat to its hegemony. And what is the one area where the it can assert its superiority? Military power. It is why the US continues to pour resources into the bloated defense (aka “war”) budget and seeks to “bleed the Russians dry” in Ukraine. Hence the connection between all of the events noted at the beginning of this post.

It should be clear that the world faces two very grave dangers at this point in history, the threat of military conflict escalating to nuclear war and the other existential threats of global warming and global pandemics, which, if not mitigated, will lead to the end of society as we know it. Unfortunately, the US is one of the main driving forces of the former and, as a result of its focus on brandishing its military power, is effectively ignoring the latter. Not since the early 1960s has the threat of escalation leading to nuclear war been this great and that generation didn’t have to face these other existential threats. 

We, who live in the belly of the beast, need to fight like hell to redirect the energies of the Empire of Liberty away from its historical direction in order to build for a better tomorrow. We don’t have any other choice.