Has US Empire Benefited the World?

[unhappycamper]

Has US Empire Benefited the World?
by Ivan Eland
Published on Wednesday, September 15, 2010 by Consortium News

In a recent column, Thomas Friedman, probably the most influential “internationalist” — read: proponent of U.S. interventionism in faraway places — has finally discovered that the United States must soon turn inward and put domestic economic growth first because of its massive public debt, huge federal budget deficit, and looming fiscal crisis caused by a dramatic automatic escalation in entitlements spending.

Eureka, the foreign policy rapture has begun!

~snip~

Friedman writes, and most Americans will be eager to believe, that the diminished interventionism of the now “frugal superpower” will be bad for the world because:

“(T)he most unique and important feature of U.S. foreign policy over the last century has been the degree to which America’s diplomats and naval, air, and ground forces provided global public goods — from open seas to open trade and from containment to counterterrorism — that benefited many others besides us.

~snip~

The founders of the United States, who are regularly idolized by most Americans, would roll over in their graves at the mutation of their traditional, peaceful, and restrained foreign policy into a militaristic, globe-girdling empire that is exhausting the country economically and ruining the republic that they created.

[dipsydoodle]

1. I treat everything you post seriously

so the occasional joke question is fine with me.

Yes : The founders of the United States, who are regularly idolized by most Americans, would roll over in their graves at the mutation of their traditional, peaceful, and restrained foreign policy into a militaristic, globe-girdling empire that is exhausting the country economically and ruining the Republic that they created.

[madrchsod]

2. a friend from ghana has good memories of the usa peace corps.

he said the russian equivalent had "bad shoes". i never asked them what he meant by that!

i think the peace corps is one of america`s better global programs

[lonestarnot]

3. caused by a dramatic automatic escalation in entitlements spending?

Oh yeah. Entitlement spending, sounds like it came from a Friedman. WTF?

[sinkingfeeling]

4. What a perfect pile of rubbish! I can't think of anything the American Empire has done to 'help' oth

[AngryAmish]

5. The half billion in China lifted out of subsistence life in the last 30 years?

They did it through trade. No US Navy, cost of shipping is sky high - every trading ship must be part of an armed convoy lest pirates or rogue states steal the shoes or Playstations. So, yes, the US empire has done good.

[Recursion]

7. Really? Nothing at all?

I don't think you're trying very hard.

[sinkingfeeling]

13. Not nearly enough to offset the murder of millions of innocents around the globe and over

two hundred years.

[Recursion]

14. That wasn't the question

The question is whether or not the American Empire has done anything to help the world. Pretending the answer is "no" is just silly.

[raccoon]

6. Empires don't benefit the world, other countries, or their own average citizens.

They only benefit the power elite in the homeland.

This question is like asking "Have Vampires Benefited the World?" No, not except for those few perverts who actually enjoy their attacks. :silly:

[Recursion]

8. Why do you say that?

Empires are a mixed bag but to pretend they don't have any benefits for the people in them is a little ridiculous.

[raccoon]

11. True, the average American citizen has it better than the average Third World citizen. nt

[Recursion]

12. I mean the average Phillipino is better off than the average Indonesian

Because of the American empire.

[pampango]

15. Not so sure about that. Most numbers I have seen show Indonesians as better off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Indonesia

GDP per capita - $3,900 in 2008 (around $4,200 PPP) and GINI of 34.3 (their distribution of income is much more equitable than the US which has a GINI of 41).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Philippines

GDP per capita - $1,746 in 2009 (PPP of $3,521) and GINI of 45.8 (worse than the US and much worse than Indonesia).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita

[reggie the dog]

9. during or after the cold war?

[Romulox]

10. Europeans, Japanese, Koreans, have all prospered more than the average Americans under US Empire

at least of late... :shrug:

[pampango]

17. True. I would add Chinese and Indians to that and smaller countries like Taiwan and Australia.

They are all going to have to adapt, as are we, to a world without US empire. All empires fall, but we may have hastened our own empire's demise which may be a good thing depending on how you feel about empires and what kind of world emerges.

Maybe a multi-polar world with the US, EU, China, India and perhaps Russia and Brazil (with other South American countries like the members of MERCOSUR) may evolve. Of course, cooperation between 4, 5, or 6 power centers may end up illusory. Not having one country that "sets the rules", as a perc of empire, (particularly if those "rules" hasten the demise of its empire) will be an "interesting" period to see if multilateral negotiations can provide a framework for the world to get along.

[Panaconda]

16. Good intentions?

Here's an excellent essay by another Ivan:

...

Next to money and guns, the third largest North American export is the U.S. idealist, who turns up in every theater of the world: the teacher, the volunteer, the missionary, the community organizer, the economic developer, and the vacationing do-gooders. Ideally, these people define their role as service. Actually, they frequently wind up alleviating the damage done by money and weapons, or "seducing" the "underdeveloped" to the benefits of the world of affluence and achievement. Perhaps this is the moment to instead bring home to the people of the U.S. the knowledge that the way of life they have chosen simply is not alive enough to be shared.

By now it should be evident to all America that the U.S. is engaged in a tremendous struggle to survive. The U.S. cannot survive if the rest of the world is not convinced that here we have Heaven-on-Earth. The survival of the U.S. depends on the acceptance by all so-called "free" men that the U.S. middle class has "made it." The U.S. way of life has become a religion which must be accepted by all those who do not want to die by the sword - or napalm. All over the globe the U.S. is fighting to protect and develop at least a minority who consume what the U.S. majority can afford. Such is the purpose of the Alliance for Progress of the middle-classes which the U.S. signed with Latin America some years ago. But increasingly this commercial alliance must be protected by weapons which allow the minority who can "make it" to protect their acquisitions and achievements.

But weapons are not enough to permit minority rule. The marginal masses become rambunctious unless they are given a "Creed," or belief which explains the status quo. This task is given to the U.S. volunteer - whether he be a member of CLASP or a worker in the so-called "Pacification Programs" in Viet Nam.

The United States is currently engaged in a three-front struggle to affirm its ideals of acquisitive and achievement-oriented "Democracy." I say "three" fronts, because three great areas of the world are challenging the validity of a political and social system which makes the rich ever richer, and the poor increasingly marginal to that system.


...

http://www.swaraj.org/illich_hell.htm

[Bigmack]

18. Read "Dismantling the Empire"...

by Chalmers Johnson.

His other two "Blowback" and "Sorrows of Empire" are must-reads, too.

[Diclotican]

19. unhappycamper

unhappycamper

Im not sure about how good it have been, the last 20 or so year, after the cold war ended, and the rather iron fist of US was showing. Under the cold war, in Europe at least, the US empire was defently good to have.. Not just military speaking, as the western part of Europe was under the nuclear umbrella but more to the point, after World War Two, the Marshall plan and many programs thereafter, was given a generation og good friends of US, by export of US in all ways.. From cartons, to the tractor you drive in the fields... My grand father, who was rather poor before the world war two, and had to flee to sweden under the occupation by germany in 1940 (he even was arrested and put into Grini, one of the most known police camps in Norway in the war, it was never a KZ camp, even tho the difference between a camp ruled by the german police and a regular KZ camp was more of a administrative affairs. Anyway, he had to flee, and was in Sweden for the enduring of the war..Poor grandma, who had to feed two young children, who was growing up, in situations not good at all. But somehow they survived the war, and after the war, my grandfather was coming back, to a country who was devestated by the war (and we as lucky compared to many others) And he was given a lot of help, food, trinkets and so one, and even some hardware who was still used until the early 1980s if my memory is not wrong, and it is still going, if someone get it working, as it was made to last forever, solid detroit steel..

And my father, who a couple of times was in US, when he was a sailor, have allways told that US was a great country as long as he lived.. Even tho Im not sure about what he had to say about GWB... He was rather private when it came to his political wiews.. Even tho we could talk about what was right, and wat was wrong with the world... I miss him, even tho it allways was something between us...

If US was to try to do the same, as they did after world war two, with the generous Marshal Plan, then you might as wel made a few new friends out there... Last time it worked wel, and at least two generations of europeans was made best friends forever;).. So it is hope for you still, but my guess, is that US need to use more soft power, than hard power to make it posible...

And I have to say, to a Empire who have been "declining" for many years, your footprint in the world are larger than empires before you.. US culture are over the whole world.. From Coca Cola, to what we look at TV and Cinema... Your footprint is BIG regardness of what your political decline have been..

Diclotican