Monday, 21 March 2022

The Myth of Indispensable Nation

In 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was interviewed by Lesley Stahl in the show called 60 Minutes

Lesley Stahl asked: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright’s answer: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” If Putin or any minister in his government were to say something like this in context of the Ukraine war, all Russians would be demonized endlessly by the Western media. 

In a 1998 interview with the Today Show, Albright defended the American action in Iraq: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.” More than a million people died during America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. But this war was started on the false claim that Iraq had WMDs.

After winning the Second World War in 1945, power went into the head of America’s political and intellectual class. Driven by hubris, they were convinced that they were the “indispensable nation,” that it was their “manifest destiny” to dominate the globe. Instead of maintaining order, they have destroyed tens of millions of lives in Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, South America, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, and North Africa. 

The economic policies, healthcare policies, climate policies, and environmental policies that America has imposed upon the world after 1945 are as destructive (anti development) as its military policies—these policies are designed to hinder other countries from becoming developed independent of America. There is no logical basis for the claim that America is an indispensable nation. It is an empire like so many empires of the past.

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