Weaker nations,
Take our lead;
Or we go
And intercede.
Take our lead;
Or we go
And intercede.
Whew! The
Of course you can never have enough oil. It's like
cocaine. Or money. To secure our supply of black gold, we bought off Saudi Arabia , Kuwait ,
Nigeria , Bahrain , Uzbekistan ,
Equatorial Guinea , and Mexico , and we conquered Iraq and Libya . Still on our to-do list are Iran and Venezuela , but they should fall in
line before long. We're undermining their leaders lickety-split. Only Russia seems
likely to withstand the pressure.
After oil, corporate profits are our next priority. Thus we
ink an unending stream of trade deals from the WTO, NAFTA, and DR-CAFTA to the
pacts with South Korea , Jordan , Colombia , etc. More are in the
pipeline, of course. The upshot of these treaties, aside from profits, has been
to impoverish industrial workers here and farm workers abroad while undermining
environmental laws worldwide. Hence, corporations and oil constitute those
touted U.S.
"interests" that our diplomats and military are ever so keen to
protect and advance.
Nonetheless, we've developed
the appropriate tools to succeed. Unmanned aircraft are the latest. When
insurgents are making headway in an unsettled land, or menacing a friendly
dictator, send in the drones.
But our strongest influence
abroad remains the military. We run at least 700 military bases outside the United
States , not counting the 400 in Afghanistan .
The troops recently sent to Uganda
will not only help corral Joseph Kony, but also secure influence over Ugandan
and South Sudanese oil.
And now our special and
secret forces are dominant. These guys can go anywhere, kill anyone, kidnap
anyone, torture anyone, destroy anything, and not answer to anyone.
Yes, running the world is a
lot of work. Expensive too. But the best part is that the American public
supports it, even while grousing at airport check-ins about the resulting
terrorist threats and telling pollsters that no, they don't think the
Afghanistan War is worth it. We may be going broke but we're not giving up our
empire, by golly.
OtherWords columnist
William A. Collins is a former state representative, and a former mayor of
Norwalk, Connecticut . otherwords.org