Pox Americana: Exposing the American Empire

Edited by John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney Monthly Review Press 2004 The editors of Pox Americana observe that references to US global action in terms of imperialism, though once dismissed as, in the words of John F. Kennedy, "wholly baseless and incredible" and the work of "propagandists," are now completely acceptable in liberal, conservative, and neoconservative circles alike. There is, as usual, disagreement among our elite rulers on the details, but also as is usual, the notion of the right of the US to impose its will around the globe is unchallenged. Among the authors included in Pox Americana are Robert W. McChesney, Harry Magdoff, Noam Chomsky and Bernadine Dohrn. One of the most important issues addressed by these essayists in Pox Americana is the origin of American imperialism. Many liberals and progressives declare the US a hijacked vessel, steered off its democratic course by the avaricious pirates of the Bush II gang into previously unexplored seas of deceit, aggression and war-making. Their claim that, up until now, the US government has acted with at worst misguided good intentions towards domestic and foreign populations, mirrors the distress of the amnesiacs who think that the use of torture by the US is a recent development. The United States was born of the British empire, which had itself been born when England began removing and exterminating the Irish and replacing them with loyal Scots. The British paid bounties for Irish heads, scalps and ears, a policy they later exported to North America and its native population. The United States became an empire on July 4, 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, in which Thomas Jefferson complained that King George III had "endeavored to prevent the Population of these States," referring to treaty requirements following the end of the French and Indian War that the British refrain from settling Indian lands across the Allegheny/Appalachian line and that the tens of thousands of settlers already there leave. The declaration made clear that the new country would continue to spread across the continent. After reaching the Pacific, the American empire continued West in the late 19th century with the brutal conquest of the Philippines and proceeded to cover the globe. (On American military aggression across the centuries, I recommend Ward Churchill's On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.) The essayists in Pox Americana draw a direct line from this history to the invasion of Iraq, explaining the behavior of Bush II and company as the natural behavior of a capitalist empire, not an aberration. They explain US behavior in terms of the death of the Soviet Union, declining petroleum resources, geopolitical strategizing, the expanding domestic security state (including the prison industrial complex) and the sustaining structural requirements of the institution of empire itself. This book, designed to "help equip humanity for the major anti-imperialist struggles that lie ahead," provides an in-depth, yet focused, introduction to the crimes of the US empire.