What unites them is this: a settled commitment to American global supremacy. That is something far more important to Dick Cheney, the human embodiment of the existing global power structure, than a few points on the tax rate or a little more diversity in government hiring. Kamala Harris, in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, promised that “I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” This is enough for Dick Cheney. In this sense, she is a traditional Democrat.
Even among Democrats, the baseline assumption that America must have enough guns to exert our will on the entire world is not questioned. Kamala Harris may push for paid family leave, but she is not going to dismantle the United States intelligence agencies. Kamala Harris may raise taxes on capital gains, but she is not going to meaningfully slash military funding. Kamala Harris may protect abortion, but she is not going to stop sending weapons to Israel, or remove America’s drone bases in Africa, or Give Schools All The Money They Need and Make The Air Force Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber. The harshest things that America does, its most uncompromising violence, its rawest assertion of pure power over weaker people, is always done overseas, far away from where we can watch it. For generations, there has been a mutual agreement from both major parties to do what must be done to protect America’s ability to militarily dominate the world—the gun that protects our concurrent ability to be richer than everyone else, the velvet fist that allows us to extract trillions of dollars in value from the Global South and use it to raise our own national standard of living. This commitment to maintaining the global order, people like Dick Cheney understand, is more important than all the other, smaller issues that voters get worked up about.
Mostly, Democrats deal with this reality by not talking about it. […] We, as Democratic voters, pretty much just ignore this stuff. We may come out against specific wars that are particularly bad ideas, but we, as a party, have almost zero will to confront the military industrial complex and its global tentacles and the way that it maintains, at gunpoint, the complex system of global economic power that allows us to live nice lives.
It’s not that Donald Trump has any ideological opposition to this commitment, which the Republicans have always embraced with relish. It’s just that he’s insane and an unpredictable egomaniac and therefore cannot be counted on to fulfill his role on this matter. […] They may prefer a Republican, but they need, above all, someone predictable. Someone who will not try to undermine the entire system. In this race, that person is Kamala Harris. And so Dick Cheney and the men like him will support Kamala Harris.
Yeah, definitely not something to proudly mention at the debate.
Echoes of the 2016 debate: Sanders calls out Clinton on taking advice from Henry Kissinger
A shared commitment to American supremacy.
They say that like it’s a bad thing. Obviously American voters would be fools to oppose this, but even for the third world the alternative to Pax Americana has never been local self-determination and economic success. In the past, it was dominance by the Soviet Union. Now there is no other country able to exert power on a global scale (although China is working hard to get there) but still plenty of tyrants capable of dominating their region of the globe. The USA does not always act to prevent that. When it does, it usually acts in its own self-interest. It has made serious mistakes. The alternative is worse.
It has made serious mistakes.
Citations Needed podcast: Episode 13: The Always Stumbling US Empire
“Stumbling”, “sliding”, “drawn into” war––the media frequently assumes the US is bumbling its way around the world. The idea that the United States operates in “good faith” is taken for granted for most of the American press while war is always portrayed as something that happens to the US, not something it seeks out.
On this episode, Adam and Nima explore the media’s commitment to the narrative of “United States as reluctant warrior,” whose leadership and decision-making always has the “best intentions.” We also examine the new Ken Burns and Lynn Novick PBS series on Vietnam which traffics in many of these tropes. With guest Professor Hannah Gurman.
I can’t listen to an hour-long podcast right now, but I want to clarify that by “mistake” I mean a war of choice that that USA started but did not win. I think this is a definition that does not require subjective judgements of intent or justification, because if future defeat had been common knowledge then the public and the government as a whole would not have chosen to go to war. (There may have been those who wanted war for their own reasons which did not depend on victory, but their ability to steer the country towards war depended on convincing others that the war could be won.)
They say that like it’s a bad thing.
It is a bad thing.
Obviously American voters would be fools to oppose it, but even for the third world the alternative to Pax Americana has never been local self-determination and economic success.
There is an awful lot of US-instigated war in that “Pax”.
Re: self a determination, there have been many examples of decolonization that were in explicit opposition to this empire.
Re: economic success, there have also been examples of this, though one should keep in mind that the US has tried its very best to crush those countries.
For an example of what you get when fully subjugated to Pax Americana, see Haiti.
In the past, it was dominance by the Soviet Union.
Are we pretending the non-aligned movement didn’t exist? China didn’t exist?
Now there is no other country able to exert power on a global scale (although China is working hard to get there) but still plenty of tyrants capable of dominating their region of the globe
Plenty? Name 3.
The USA does not always act to prevent that. When it does, it usually acts in its own self-interest. It has made serious mistakes. (Thanks for that, Cheney.)
The system is working exactly as intended. It is not broken and those aren’t mistakes. Those are the intentional actions to destroy a country that was deemed to be against US interests in keeping that region divided and controlled. The war criminals that perpetrated it have not been brought to justice and are so normalized that the Dem presidential nominee hasn’t rejected their endorsements and their voting base isn’t outrages.
The genocide in Gaza is not an oopsie, it is an intentional US-backed policy with concrete goals in support if its apartheid proxy.
The only extent to which there are “mistakes” when engaging in such ontological evil is when you aren’t as effective at it as you had hoped. Maybe you leave too many children alive or a desalination plant intact.
The alternative is worse.
The rising alternative is clearly better as it undermines the US from starving your population with unilateral sanctions.
- List of Atrocities committed by US authorities
- A Detailed Chronological List of US Interventions, Invasions, Destabilzations, and Assistance to Oppressive Regimes (ending in 2002)
- The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It
- Shock therapy (economics)
- Are We The Baddies?
- The blueprint of regime change operations How regime change happens in the 21st century with your consent
- Infographic: US military presence around the world The US controls about 750 bases in at least 80 countries worldwide and spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.
- Michael Parenti: Africa is Rich
Because he knows she will uphold the status quo he benefits from without any real material changes
