"All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it"

Alexis de Tocqueville

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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AMERICA: the nightmare

To most Europeans, I guess, America now looks like the most dangerous country in the world. Since America is unquestionably the most powerful country, the transformation of America’s image within the last thirty years is very frightening for Europeans. It is probably still more frightening for the great majority of the human race who are neither Europeans nor North Americans, but are Latin Americans, Asians and Africans. They, I imagine, feel even more insecure than we feel. They feel, at any moment, American may intervene in their internal affairs, with the same appalling consequences as have followed from American intervention in Southeast Asia.

In today's climate, wherever  there is trouble, violence, suffering, tragedy, the rest of us are now quick to suspect that the CIA―the new bogey man―had a hand in it. Our phobia about the CIA is, no doubt, as fantastically excessive as America’s phobia about world communism used to be; but in this case, too, there is just enough convincing evidence to make the phobia genuine. In fact, the roles of the United States and Russia have been reversed in the eyes of much of the world. Today, America has become the nightmare.

Arnold Toynbee in 1971

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PLEASE NOTE: This article does not diminish my respect for the many US soldiers who fought so courageously in two World Wars. Nor is this intended as a slight against the many hardworking, honest and God-fearing American people.The American people as much as America's friends have been betrayed by their successive governments. (the author)

THE TRAGEDY OF TWO WORLD WARS: how we beat our enemy, but got fleeced by our 'friends'

The United States emerged from World War I as the wealthiest nation on earth, more by taking advantage of her allies than by her own exertions. The mighty dollar before 1914 had been but one currency among others. The war debts owed to the United States seemed beyond the wit of man to repay. The response of President Coolidge to his erstwhile allies financial troubles was as hardnosed as it was dismissive, “Well they hired the money, didn’t they?” Britain struggled to her debts to the United States. However, those who owed Britain money were either teetering on bankruptcy or in the case of the Soviet Union had no intention of repaying anything to capitalists. International finance after the war struggled. The exchange system, built on gold and confidence in the markets, was destroyed. There was little gold about and most of it was in America.

Twenty years later America repeated what it had done in World War I, but on a much grander scale and with a like devastating effect on Britain. Once more hanging back from entering the war for two years whilst Britain bled, the USA emerged as the undisputed leader, proprietor, protector, and policeman of the non-Communist world. The huge expansion of military bases and power was accompanied by an equally sensational expansion in trade and capital overseas. By stopping the Germans in two wars, by cutting its allies meanly down to size, American economic and political expansion was unparalleled. France and Britain especially had been reduced to second-rate powers by the treachery and self-interest of their American ‛ally’. America had developed, in the words of Senator J. William Fulbright, “an arrogance of power” and attitude of “do it our way or else”.

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"The way one war ends determines the shape of the next." Richard Sakwa