International Relations
in the age of empires

"Just because you don't take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."- Pericles, 430 BC

"We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow." - British Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston (1784-1865)

" Imperialism is an institution under which one nation asserts the right to seize the land or at least to control the government or resources of another people."- John T. Flynn

"We don't seek empires. We're not imperialistic. We never have been. I can't imagine why you'd even ask the question." US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, questioned by an al-Jazeera correspondent, April 29, 2003.

"No one can now doubt the word of America" US President George W. Bush, State of the Union, January 20, 2004 (quoted in Empire Notes)

"...All oppressed nations want independence. Everything is subject to change...In the past, Britain made war on us many times. Britain, the United States, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, tsarist Russia and Holland were all very interested in this land of ours. They were all our teachers by negative example and we were their pupils..."US Imperialism is a Paper Tiger - Mao Tse Tung, 1956

"...We don't want anyone to own another person as a slave. We don't want anyone to employ wage slaves, either. Nor do we want anyone to politically coerce and repress others, to fold, spindle, or mutilate others, to rape, or to deny, defy, or crucify others..." Michael Albert

"Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." Arundhati Roy

The Age of Imperialism - an Online History of the United States

"...The idea of manifest destiny gained popularity in the 1830s and 1840s. (The term was coined in 1845 by newspaper columnist John L. O'Sullivan.) As people began settling the western territories, wresting control of the land from the original Native American inhabitants, many Americans came to believe that it was their nation's "manifest destiny" to possess all of the North American continent. Later in the century, this idea easily gave way to larger dreams of expanding America's influence around the world.."

The Genocide of the American Indian

�The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him. American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New Zealander and Maori, - in each case the victor, horrible though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people. The consequences of struggles for territory between civilized nations seem small by comparison. Looked at from the standpoint of the ages, it is of little moment whether Lorraine is part of Germany or of France, whether the northern Adriatic cities pay homage to Austrian Kaiser or Italian King; But it is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races.� The Winning of the West Vol. 4 The Indian Wars Page 56 by President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt more

Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism - V.I.Lenin, 1916

"..in its economic essence imperialism is monopoly capitalism. This in itself determines its place in history, for monopoly that grows out of the soil of free competition, and precisely out of free competition, is the transition from the capitalist system to a higher socio-economic order... Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations - all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism..." more

The flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag - Major General Smedley Butler, Unites States Marine Corps, 1933

"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defence at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defence of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." more

The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts - George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning of the U.S. Dept. of State, State Department Briefing, 1948 -

"...we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.

For these reasons, we must observe great restraint in our attitude toward the Far Eastern areas. The peoples of Asia and of the Pacific area are going to go ahead, whatever we do, with the development of their political forms and mutual interrelationships in their own way. This process cannot be a liberal or peaceful one. The greatest of the Asiatic peoples - the Chinese and the Indians - have not yet even made a beginning at the solution of the basic demographic problem involved in the relationship between their food supply and their birth rate. Until they find some solution to this problem, further hunger, distress, and violence are inevitable. All of the Asiatic peoples are faced with the necessity for evolving new forms of life to conform to the impact of modern technology. This process of adaptation will also be long and violent. It is not only possible, but probable, that in the course of this process many peoples will fall, for varying periods, under the influence of Moscow, whose ideology has a greater lure for such peoples, and probably greater reality, than anything we could oppose to it. All this, too, is probably unavoidable; and we could not hope to combat it without the diversion of a far greater portion of our national effort than our people would ever willingly concede to such a purpose.

In the face of this situation we would be better off to dispense now with a number of the concepts which have underlined our thinking with regard to the Far East. We should dispense with the aspiration to �be liked� or to be regarded as the repository of a high-minded international altruism. We should stop putting ourselves in the position of being our brothers' keeper and refrain from offering moral and ideological advice. We should cease to talk about vague and - for the Far East - unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better..." more

The Military Industrial Complex, Farewell Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

"... we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations... The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government.... In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex...The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. ... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together..."

"... interference by one state in the affairs of another is common currency, and the entire corpus of international law (admittedly a weak reed) represents a series of limitations on outward sovereignty. In any case, strong states notoriously do not reciprocate fully recognition of the sovereignty of weak states. So why is such an absurd idea put forth?

...The sovereignty of the states - their inward and outward sovereignty within the framework of an interstate system - is a fundamental pillar of the capitalist world-economy. If it falls, or seriously declines, capitalism is untenable as a system. I agree that it is in decline today, for the first time in the history of the modern world-system. This is the primary sign of the acute crisis of capitalism as an historical system. The essential dilemma of capitalists, singly and as a class, is whether to take full short-run advantage of the weakening of the states, or to try short-run repair to restore the legitimacy of the state structures, or to spend their energy trying to construct an alternative system. Behind the rhetoric, intelligent defenders of the status quo are aware of this critical situation. While they are trying to get the rest of us to talk about the pseudo-issues of globalization, some of them at least are trying to figure out what a replacement system could be like, and how to move things in that direction. If we don't want to live in the future with the inegalitarian solution that they will promote, we should be asking the same question..." more

Thomas Friedman, "A Manifesto for the Fast World", New York Times Magazine, March 28, 1999

"As the country that benefits most from global economic integration, we have the responsibility of making sure that this new system is sustainable.. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist - McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps....The global system cannot hold together without an activist and generous American foreign and defense policy. Without America on duty, there will be no America Online...

There is a saying in Silicon Valley that "loyalty is just one mouse-click away." But you can take that too far. Execs there make boasts like: "We are not an American company. We are I.B.M. U.S., I.B.M. Canada, I.B.M. Australia, I.B.M. China." Oh, yeah? Then, the next time I.B.M. China gets in trouble in China, call Jiang Zemin for help. And the next time Congress closes another military base in Asia, call Microsoft's navy to secure the sea lanes of the Pacific. And the next time Congress wants to close more consulates and embassies, call Amazon.com to order a new passport. This doesn't mean America needs to be involved everywhere all the time. There are big, important places and there are small, unimportant places. Diplomacy is about knowing the difference between the two, and knowing how to mobilize others to act where we cannot or should not act alone.." more

Rebuilding America's Defenses - Project for the New American Century, 2000

"...American land power is the essential link in the chain that translates U.S. military supremacy into American geopolitical pre eminence... Elements of U.S. Army Europe should be redeployed to Southeast Europe, while a permanent unit should be based in the Persian Gulf region...In Southeast Asia, American forces are too sparse to address rising security requirements adequately... No U.S. strategy can constrain a Chinese challenge to American regional leadership if our security guarantees to Southeast Asia are intermittent and U.S. military presence a periodic affair. For this reason, an increased naval presence in Southeast Asia, while necessary, will not be sufficient; as in the Balkans, relying solely on allied forces or the rotation of U.S. forces in stability operations not only increases the stress on those forces but undercuts the political goals of such missions. For operational as well as political reasons, stationing rapidly mobile U.S. ground and air forces in the region will be required...

..Since today�s peace is the unique product of American pre eminence, a failure to preserve that pre eminence allows others an opportunity to shape the world in ways antithetical to American interests and principles...Global leadership is not something exercised at our leisure, when the mood strikes us or when our core national security interests are directly threatened; then it is already too late. Rather, it is a choice whether or not to maintain American military pre eminence, to secure American geopolitical leadership, and to preserve the American peace..." more

Military-Industrial Complex Revisited, 1999-2002 - William D. Hartung, Foreign Policy in Focus

"...Contrary to initial expectations, the military-industrial complex did not fade away with the end of the cold war. It has simply reorganized itself. As a result of a rash of military-industry mergers encouraged and subsidized by the Clinton administration, the "Big Three" weapons makers�Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon�now receive among themselves over $30 billion per year in Pentagon contracts. This represents more than one out of every four dollars that the Defense Department doles out for everything from rifles to rockets...President Eisenhower�s warning about the "acquisition of unwarranted influence" by the military-industrial complex is as relevant today as it was in 1961. Despite the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the U.S. military budget is higher today than it was when Eisenhower gave his military-industrial complex speech in 1961" more

The Enemy Within - Gore Vidal, 2002

"...Joseph Schumpeter in 1919, described ancient Rome in a way that sounds eerily like the United States in 2001: 'There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours.' We have only outdone the Romans in turning metaphors such as the war on terrorism, or poverty, or Aids into actual wars on targets we appear, often, to pick at random in order to maintain turbulence in foreign lands..." more

Noam Chomsky on Dominance and its Dilemmas, 2003

"The new imperial grand strategy presents the US as a revisionist state seeking to parlay its momentary advantages into a world order in which it runs the show, a unipolar world in which no state or coalition could ever challenge it as global leader, protector, and enforcer. These policies are fraught with danger even for the US itself...Violence is a powerful instrument of control, as history demonstrates. But the dilemmas of dominance are not slight..."" more

Arundhati Roy in Confronting Empire, 2003

"..it is a myth that the free market breaks down national barriers. The free market does not threaten national sovereignty, it undermines democracy. As the disparity between the rich and the poor grows, the fight to corner resources is intensifying. To push through their "sweetheart deals," to corporatize the crops we grow, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the dreams we dream, corporate globalization needs an international confederation of loyal, corrupt, authoritarian governments in poorer countries to push through unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies.

Corporate Globalization - or shall we call it by its name? - Imperialism - needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice. Meanwhile, the countries of the North harden their borders and stockpile weapons of mass destruction. After all they have to make sure that it's only money, goods, patents and services that are globalized. Not the free movement of people. Not a respect for human rights. Not international treaties on racial discrimination or chemical and nuclear weapons or greenhouse gas emissions or climate change, or - god forbid - justice.

So this - all this - is "empire." This loyal confederation, this obscene accumulation of power, this greatly increased distance between those who make the decisions and those who have to suffer them....Our fight, our goal, our vision of Another World must be to eliminate that distance. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." more

Parecon - Life after Capitalism - Michael Albert

"The structure of capitalism is flawed. The motor that powers it cannot but vastly increase the disparity between the poor and the rich globally and within countries as well. Parecon is a brave argument for replacing that flawed machine and offers a much needed -- more equitable, democratic, participatory -- alternative economic vision." more

Behind the Invasion of Iraq - Aspects of India's Economy - December 2002

"Readers of Aspects will no doubt be surprised at the fact that we have chosen to bring out a special issue apparently not on any aspect of India�s political economy, but on the impending US assault on Iraq. However, we believe the two - India�s political economy and the most important current world development - are connected, and as the current offensive drive unleashed by the US worldwide proceeds, the implications for our region will become clearer. Even as the US prepares to launch a massive assault on Iraq, it has declared India to be its most important military ally in the Asian region (not including west Asia)�this despite the fact that it has three bases in Pakistan at the moment... Not only is the US increasingly dependent on West Asian oil for its own consumption; its capture of West Asian oil is also intended to secure its supremacy among imperialist powers. The global crisis of overproduction is showing up the underlying weakness of the US real economy, as a result of which US trade and budget deficits are galloping. The euro now poses a credible alternative to the status of the dollar as the global reserve currency, threatening the US�s crucial ability to fund its deficits by soaking up the world�s savings. The US anticipates that the capture of Iraq, and whatever else it has in store for the region, will directly benefit its corporations (oil, arms, engineering, financial) even as it shuts out the corporations from other imperialist countries. Further, it intends to prevent the bulk of petroleum trade being conducted in euros, and thus maintain the dollar�s supremacy...."

Howard Zinn in My Country: The World, May 2003

"Our government has declared a military victory in Iraq. As a patriot, I will not celebrate. I will mourn the dead -- the American GIs, and also the Iraqi dead, of which there have been many, many more. I will mourn the Iraqi children, not just those who are dead, but those who have been be blinded, crippled, disfigured, or traumatized, like the bombed children of Afghanistan who, as reported by American visitors, lost their power of speech..

When a government recklessly expends the lives of its young for crass motives of profit and power (always claiming that its motives are pure and moral ("Operation Just Cause" was the invasion of Panama and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in the present instance) it is violating its promise to the country.... With the war in Iraq won, shall we revel in American military power and, against the history of modern empires, insist that the American empire will be beneficent? The American record does not justify confidence in its boast that it will bring democracy to Iraq.

Should Americans welcome the expansion of the nation's power, with the anger this has generated among so many people in the world? Should we welcome the huge growth of the military budget at the expense of health, education, the needs of children, one fifth of whom grow up in poverty?

I suggest that a patriotic American who cares for his country might act on behalf of a different vision. Instead of being feared for our military prowess, we should want to be respected for our dedication to human rights. Should we not begin to redefine patriotism?... Should we not begin to consider all children, everywhere, as our own?.. Tom Paine used the word "patriot" to describe the rebels resisting imperial rule. He also enlarged the idea of patriotism when he said: "My country is the world. My countrymen are mankind." ...

Arundhati Roy on Public Power in the Age of Empire

" There is no discussion taking place in the world today that is more crucial than the debate about strategies of resistance. And the choice of strategy is not entirely in the hands of the public. It is also in the hands of sarkar. After all, when the U.S. invades and occupies Iraq in the way it has done, with such overwhelming military force, can the resistance be expected to be a conventional military one? (Of course, even if it were conventional, it would still be called terrorist.) In a strange sense, the U.S. government's arsenal of weapons and unrivalled air and fire power makes terrorism an all-but-inescapable response. What people lack in wealth and power, they will make up with stealth and strategy. In this restive, despairing time, if governments do not do all they can to honor non violent resistance, then by default they privilege those who turn to violence. No government's condemnation of terrorism is credible if it cannot show itself to be open to change by to non violent dissent...

"Why is George Bush so hell bent on war with Iraq? Why does his administration reject every positive Iraqi move? It all makes sense when you consider the economic implications for the USA of not going to war with Iraq. The war in Iraq is actually the US and Europe going head to head on economic leadership of the world."

"..the struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience - whether by blacks in Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Vietnam, or workers and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union itself. No cold calculation of the balance of power need deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just....We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.."" more

"...The United States has come in for strong criticism from former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev for advising other countries against acquiring nuclear weapons while refusing to destroy its own arsenal. In his first public appearance at the UN since his historic "glasnost" address to the General Assembly in 1988, Gorbachev said the United States was "hypocritical" over nuclear armaments and not prepared to eliminate its own such arms.

"I think Russia is ready to cooperate. Now the question is, is the United States -- the only remaining superpower -- ready to do this? I think not myself," he said at a function at United Nations headquarters where he presented the Cranston Peace Award to CNN founder Ted Turner. "I think the United States is sick. It suffers from sickness, disease of being the victor and it needs to cure itself," he said. He advised Washington against suggesting that other countries have no need for nuclear weapons while it retains a large arsenal itself. "They say other people don't need it, but what kind of law is this that they are advocating? It's the law of the jungle," he said.

After receiving the award, instituted by the Global Security Institute, Turner suggested a ten-year plan to make the world free of nuclear weapons.

"Every country that has nuclear weapons should undertake to reduce the arsenal by ten per cent each year. That way the balance of power will remain the same and at the end of ten years, there would be no nuclear weapons left," Turner said.

Turner, who had established the UN Foundation with his $1 billion contribution to support United Nations goals, was honoured on Wednesday for his "outstanding work to end threats posed by nuclear weapons, his advocacy for sustainable development and his visionary leadership in communications".

Turner said it was "hypocrisy" for the US with 30,000 nuclear weapons to ask other countries not to have them.

"I don't think we have ever said anything about Israel's nuclear weapons and I don't see how we can say anything about anybody when we have got so many ourselves," he said.

Earlier, addressing a press conference, Turner said he was an "abolitionist." "I believe we ought to get rid of all (those weapons) as quickly as we can," he said, adding that while perhaps nothing could stop nations from "cheating" and building one or two weapons but they would not destroy the world. "After we get rid of all those weapons, the next step would be to preserve the environment," he said.

Gorbachev said he continued to stand by his position, and that of late US President Ronald Reagan, that no one could win a nuclear war."That being the case, weapons must be substantially reduced and eliminated. Military doctrines need to be reviewed and trust between all interested parties needed to be restored," he added.

"In publicly expressing her concerns about the Iran-India gas pipeline during her press conference here on Wednesday, the visiting United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, made it clear that India's energy security and the Indo-U.S. "strategic partnership" will matter less to Washington than its policy of isolating and undermining the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Dr. Rice also dropped a broad hint that the Indian aspiration for a greater role in international affairs would be better served not through reform of the United Nations, and a permanent seat in the Security Council, but through ad hoc U.S.-led multilateral initiatives such as the controversial and short-lived "core group" set up by Washington in the wake of last year's tsunami.

For the first time since India and the U.S. inaugurated their "strategic partnership," then, it is evident that on the two key issues animating policymakers here, energy security and a greater role for India in a multipolar world, Washington is keen on defining the rules and setting the limits and that there is little congruence of interest.

While both India and the U.S. agree that today's world is no longer the world of 1945, the change that each country perceives is radically different. New Delhi sees the rise of a number of new powers, itself included, who need to be accommodated in a formal power structure. Washington, however, sees only the rise of its own strength, untrammelled by the presence of any rival power. India wants the U.N. Security Council to reflect the change that it believes has occurred. But the Bush administration believes the U.N. system has to be reformed to accommodate the reality of U.S. power and that if this does not happen, the U.N. itself will be made irrelevant..."

�(America�s) Silicon Valley companies are based on 'know what.' They know the market, they know the technology and they know what products to make to earn money. (India�s) Coolie Valley companies are based on 'know how.' They do the software coding for other companies that have the 'know what.' If you tell them what to do, they know how and will do it for you.� The Asian �coolies� of the late 1800s and early 1900s came to the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and the West Indies as laborers, doing the physical, backbreaking work westerners didn�t want to do. ... In this new century, India�s tech workers are coming to be seen as nothing more than glamorized coolies (rich coolies, but coolies still). For the global corporate sector, India is just one large back office, not a formidable economic force such as China or even a political nuisance such as Pakistan." more