A MUST READ -- Eric Zuesse -- What U.S. Hegemony Is, How It Started, and When

 What U.S. Hegemony Is, How It Started, and When

 

Eric Zuesse, July 14, 2022

 

 

 

An unquestioned assumption amongst America’s Establishment is that the global dominance that America inherited from having been the last of the major world powers to enter World War II, and from having suffered (by far) the least damage from that War, needs to continue in perpetuity, and that it needs to become total U.S. dominance over the entire planet, and especially dominance over the world’s largest nation, Russia, which is 1.77 times larger than America (the world’s third-largest country) is. (Russia is 1.74 times larger than Canada, the world’s second-largest country, is; and is 1.78 times larger than China, which is the world’s fourth-largest. It is 2.01 times larger than the 5th-largest, Brazil; and is 2.20 times larger than the 6th-largest, Australia. It is 5.20 times larger than the 7th-largest, India. So, there are only 6 giant countries: Russia, Canada, America, China, Brazil, and Australia.) The term that many scholars use to refer to this belief — this objective, that America’s dominance over the entire world would be good instead of bad — is “hegemony”. Here, this belief will be explained. 

 

Historically, any nation’s Establishment (its aristocracy and their employees and other agents) seeks to control as much of the world’s natural resources as possible, and this craving by them is the leading cause of wars. Russia, as the world’s largest nation, is also the world’s richest in natural resources. That is the main reason why the thousand-or-so people who control America (who mainly are America’s billionaires, America’s richest and best-connected individuals) want, more than anything else, to control Russia, which they don’t YET control. Their top mutually shared (virtually unanimous, if not 100% unanimous) assumption is that, however this is to be done, America needs to achieve control over Russia — that it is a good, instead of a bad, objective to pursue. If any member of America’s Establishment does NOT hold this objective, then that person would be shunned by all of his or her colleagues, and would consequently become targeted by all of them for defeat or conquest, destroying that person’s reputation and/or enterprises. Consequently, none comes forth publicly in opposition to this objective, which is called “U.S. hegemony” when it is not being labelled instead by benign-sounding ideological terms or phrases such as “democracy,” “freedom,” “the American way,” “the liberal international order,” or “the rules-based international order,” all of which presume that America’s continued and increased control over the world will help, instead of hinder, such alleged “values” — which really are global conquest, however that is to be achieved. So, the public join in: they (as workers for, or other agents of, those extremely wealthy individuals), likewise favor continued, and increased, U.S. global rule, hegemony. This goal is accepted by America’s public, as-if it were the very meaning of being an American ‘patriot’, and to oppose it is thus ‘unpatriotic’. This belief, in the virtuousness of extending yet further the American empire, is also the reason why the highest-respected of all institutions in America is “the military.”

 

Prior to 1898, America had been only a confused but largely democratic country, and not yet an imperialistic capitalist, or “fascist,” country, such as it has been ever since then, except during the Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945), when America was — for only that brief time-span — the most fully democratic country that it has ever been. Almost immediately after WW II, America became, even more than it ever had been, an imperialistic capitalist country, effectively controlled by its military-industrial complex, which never before even had existed. This is the reason why U.S. President Harry S. Truman (inspired by the advice that he had received from his hero, Dwight David Eisenhower — “Ike” — the most gifted liar of anyone who became America’s President, except for Barack Obama) created, in 1947, both the U.S. Department of ‘Defense’ (America’s first-ever standing army — which had been condemned by America’s Founders, but Truman and the U.S. Congress dismissed that concern) and the CIA (for producing coups, which America started doing in 1948 Thailand).