The US, their wars and global politics - My views
My views on the role the US plays on the international stage today are pretty simple to outline:
Up to the Great Depression, in the 1930-ies, the US economy was pretty much centred inwards: the US domestic market. Up to then, the US was not a world-power, and had hardly any affluence abroad.
The Great Depression hit the US very hard, and shook it fundamentally...: a large Western country, unable to feed its own people. To me, WWII, just after the Great Depression, was a pivotal time in the US economy and its global politics: Sucked into WWII, the US learned that by ensuring a US global presence, through its global military and political presence, it could ensure their global economic presence: assuring they had a wider steady input of natural resources (oil, minerals, basic products) and a much bigger output towards the global consumer market, far beyond their national borders.
This lesson-learned was not new, by the way: this was how the English global Empire was built and maintained between the 18th and 20th century: A global economic power importing basic supplies and exporting goods, duly supported by a global military land and sea force.
And as WWII was the point where the English Empire started to crumble, the US Empire was born almost "naturally" to fill that vacuum: through continued global military dominance, global political influence, ensure a steady and stable domestic economic growth.
And as of WWII, the US did everything in its political and military power, to ensure its economic interests were preserved. Unfortunately most of the US economy is dominated by and serving large US mega-companies, who -in turn- also finance US political parties ensuring US (and thus global) politics were steered in the way those companies want. The fuzzy "border" between the US mega companies and US politics makes an interesting subject by itself, resembling legalized bribery.
After WWII, the subsequent global cold war between the US and "the communists" was not an ideological war, but an economic war, ensuring US political, military and thus economic influence was ensured. Be it via public and visible wars or military actions (Korea, Vietnam/SE Asia, Cuba, Panama, Grenada, the Balkans) or subversive/proxy wars (South and Central America, Africa, and later on, the Middle East), the US did everything it could, to ensure and maintain its dominating position on the global stage, purely for economic profits. Global politics, military and subversive (or even humanitarian) actions were just "a means", to serve its own economical interests.
As such, no matter which war the US was involved in, since the 1950-ies, it looked first at their own economic interests. The politics, of "spreading of democracy", "war on terror" or whatever other reasons they might give, none of that matters. It is their economic interests which dominated all, learning from the Great Depression that their limited domestic market could not sustain the economic growth and gain they needed.
Though defeated in SE Asia, and despite some (temporary) gains in subversive actions in South and Central America in the '70-'80-ies, the big turn-around (according to me) was the 2003 Iraq war: Fed by blunt fake and false propaganda, Iraq was invaded under false pretences: that war was purely for Iraq's oil resources and its strategic location in the Middle East.
Followed by Libya, and various others wars (either successful or failed attempts like Syria), the US ended up where we are now in 2026: Venezuela and Iran.
Neither of their unilateral military actions in Venezuela nor Iran are about "democracy", turning "dictatorships into power to the people", nor "imminent military threats". It is all about economic power and economic dominance, where their military, political (or even humanitarian) actions merely serve that one single US goal:
To ensure an imperialistic dominance of the world's economy, to ensure an economic dominance, so that a 1930-ies "Great Depression" will not happen again, AND to ensure it financially "feeds" the big US companies' global dominance, knowing these companies are the main funders/sponsors of the US political parties.
In my view: all global imperialists, be it the Roman, Christian, Byzantine, Spanish, British, Communist or US empires, are due to fail eventually. The only difference is nowadays through a fast-connected world, empires fail much faster than ever before.
As such, the US empire, despite its current military, political and economic might, will eventually fail, like all other imperialistic powers failed before.
Picture via BBC (Anadolu via Getty Images) Read the full post...
Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order.
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For a good real-time overview of the latest Twitter updates and news overview on the post-election protests, check Twazzup.
Update: June 19
There has been an active debate on other blogs and websites whether or not we should publish this list. See also the comments on this post.
Do we put people's lives in danger? I asked some of the Twitterers in Iran, but did not get an answer.
My view is: Nobody in Iran will come onto a public medium unless they consciously choose to do so. All of them hide their real identity, and actively request people to re-broadcast the information they are giving from the ground, especially as the traditional media have been put on restraint.
An interesting post on this subject, you find on the Traveller Within.
Update: June 20
On my own initiative, I deleted those who did not seem to take enough precautions in hiding their identity.
Update: June 22
On the same topic, this tweet came out today: "@shahrzadmo: State TV: Send your videos to Police so they recognise the "rioters" and arrest them!"... Does this also mean bloggers around the world should not republish YouTube videos from the protests, so people don't get identified?
For an overview of the role of social media in "post-election Iran", check this post.
Input thanks to h3x.no, reddit.com, Mohamed, Simon, Daily Dish and fellow twitter users.
Picture courtesy Madyar