How is China building an empire?#2
In my previous post, I explained how empire-building has changed from conquering a country through the military to enslaving nations via debt. Also, I spoke about the role of the USA during the world wars and how it utilized the WWII to save its economy from collapse. In this installment, I’m about to cover how the USA has set its path to becoming an ultra superpower at the turn of the 20th century.
The USA after the ‘50s
After WWII, Europe was devastated. The world needs new powers to lead them and that paved the way for two new players to emerge as superpowers. They bifurcated the world into two fronts taking up countries that follow them under their wing. The USA took the western world’s leadership and the USSR became the natural leader of communist countries and there came the power struggle.
Each country’s leadership terrorized their people of the imminent war between the two. The next 40 years after the war, these two countries spent their time with a series of nuclear tests, space races, and pulling neutral countries to their side to gain global dominance. However, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the communists’ front lost the war with the capitalists and I’m here going to talk about how the USA achieved world dominance.
During the ’50s it became clear that the USA is losing its war against communism. The Soviets were the first ones to launch a satellite, stocked more nuclear weapons than the USA, and a lot of countries gained independence from colonial powers and their struggles against those powers made their leaders naturally choose socialism or communism as their ideology. Though the USA fought its own way against colonialism, by the mid of the 20th century it has lost its “fighter against its oppressor” badge. Countries around the world saw them as an ally of the same colonial powers the fought against. There was a huge roadblock for the USA to achieve its global dominance. To break these blocks and to achieve its dreams, the USA decided to use bulldozers called Corporates.
After the war, The US corporates funded by the government of the USA started to open their shops worldwide, making the concept of Multi-National Companies to take a prominent seat. These companies set their feet on the grounds of a poor country on the behalf of the US government’s United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that worked in liaison with the World Bank. Those corporates would work with the governments of the poor nations to study the resources available in that country and help them “see” the growth that nation will achieve if they build infrastructures like power grids, roads, etc. They will also come up with a sweet deal from the USAID that is willing to fund these infrastructures at nominal interest rates. Sounds so legible with a pure intent right? No! There is more to reality than meets the eye.
Economic Hitmen and the Jackals
John Perkins in his book Confessions of an Economic Hitman explains this process as a Corporatocracy. Perkins called the agents of these corporates who visit these nations, work on project evaluations as Economic Hitmen (EHM). They never worked for Whitehouse or CIA or any other job that is directly tied to the government of the USA, yet, they lay the foundation for the American supremacy over that nation. For an ordinary man, these agents were officials of corporates that are helping his poor nation to increase its economic growth. But in reality, those companies will create a project report with inflated price tags and overestimated economic growth projection that these projects will bring. And then they would be bribing the leaders of that poor nation with huge commissions to approve these projects.
The corporatocracy works based on a sole assumption i.e. the leader of a third world/poor country is always either corrupt or can be bought.
The funds that arrive from USAID will come with a precondition that the contracts to construct those infrastructures should be given to the American companies, in this way, the fund never leaves the American soil. It will still stay in the US’ bank and will also receive an attractive interest for the money that has never been spent. In the end, poor nations will be piled up with loans they can never repay making them forever indebted to the USA.
Some leaders understood the underlying truth in these sweet deals and tried to avoid it. They questioned the motive behind these loans and how would the country repay the loans if the project fails. Here come the CIA agents referred by Perkins as Jackals to resolve these issues. Those who questioned like Omar Torrijos, Jaime Roldos, Salvador Allende, Mohammad Mosaddegh were either overthrown or assassinated. These assassinations were suppressed in the international media and coup de’ tats were painted as people raising against dictators. The most recent examples would be Manuel Zelaya from Honduras and Muammar Gadaffi from Libya.
As I said, the loans/debts have replaced the conventional military in conquering the world. Then you might wonder, if that’s the case then why do superpowers still maintain a big military complex if they can initiate economic warfare and win it without losing any life? Even though corporates took the prominent seat in waging an invisible war against countries, the importance of the military didn’t fade away. For the corporates to achieve their goals, they needed the backing of the world’s strongest military to intimidate the poor nations. They needed soldiers to perform clandestine operations to assassinate or initiate coup de’tats to remove the leaders who stand in the way of American global dominance. The best example would be the American Invasion of Panama 1989–90. Slowly in the mid of ’70s, the corporates started to dominate American politics. Candidates who were part of corporate companies ran for presidential elections. and the best example would be George Bush, his son George H.W. Bush and more recently Donal Trump. A lot of people who held powerful posts such as Secretary of Defense, Foreign Affairs, Homeland security, etc. were drawn from the corporate world.
Even though the American political system intents to achieve global dominance in one way or another, there were a few Presidents who tried to avert it. Presidents like John.F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter were believed to have opposed the ways that the American political system saw the world and everyone knows what happened to them. JFK lost his life in an assassination attempt and Carter lost his Presidency to Reager who is an open supporter of American hegemony. After the Oil crisis of 1973, the US was keener on to not facing such an issue at any time in the future. And that, as Perkins explains, made Reager-Bush administration has expanded the roles of EHMs and were given more power to achieve the goal. To explain how the USA turned the table after the oil crisis needs a separate column. I’ll talk in detail about the 1973 oil crisis in another story.
At the end of the century, with Soviets have gone, the USA stood in the world arena as the world’s only superpower. The Jackals and EHMs greatly contributed to achieving this place. However, at the beginning of the 21st century, an unexpected competition came out even the US is now doesn’t know how to deal with that new competitor.
I’m wrapping up this post with the point that the corporates took over the American political system in the late ’70s and this takeover resulted in many assassinations, the coup de’ tats, and overexploitation of the resources of the poor countries. In the next piece, I’ll discuss how China is using the methods developed by the USA to build its own empire.
