Stanley Kutler: Bush's Korea Model Serves His Middle East Aims

Long before the threat of 'International Communism" and the advent of the Cold War, the United States engaged in expeditions to open markets and territories to American merchants. If local rulers managed to keep open the ports and passages, we left well enough alone. When they could not, we took matters into our own hands. Sometime it required a few gunboats and a handful of marines, in other instance it required tens of thousands of lives, billions of dollars, and too many years. Often these efforts resulted in abject failure.

In some instances we used the ruse of protecting innocent people as the excuse for instigating combat.  Sometimes it was true. There are even some instances where the protection of innocents, and not the exploitation of others was our political and military objective. Of course, we never protected innocents from the slaughter of their government if its market and military interests were common with our own.

Writing for the Nation, University of Wisconsin Emeritus Professor of History Stanley I Kutler writes, The New American Imperium:

The Bush Administration has made clear its opposition to any peace treaty between the two Koreas without the North's submission to our nuclear weaponry demands. Bush's Korea model serves his Middle East aims. We are now captive to Saudi Arabia's and the United Arab Emirates' rich supplies of oil; to maintain that pipeline, we presumably must be prepared to defend our suppliers against any hostile aggression by Iran. 

The troubling part, as Kutler notes, is that while the Democrats are focused on opposition to the War in Iraq, they do not understand the fundamental nature of the imperial policies that got us there. Consequently, many of them, like their Republican counterparts in the Senate, adhere to polices that are consistent with the Bush-orchestrated chaos in the Middle East:

Now comes the Kyl-Lieberman resolution declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to be a terrorist organization...Interestingly, the 2006 class of newly elected Senators, with clear memories of their constituents' antiwar sentiments, voted against Kyl-Lieberman: Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Clair McCaskill (D-MO), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), Jon Tester (D-MT), and (Jim) Webb (D-VA). The Republicans continue to march in directed lockstep--only Chuck Hagel (R-NB) and surprisingly, Richard Lugar (R-IN) opposed the resolution. But the silence of such "moderates" and critics" as John Warner (R-VA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Susan Collins (R-ME) tells us about the strength of White House discipline.

Kutler's terse conclusion is too chilling:

The Democrats appear to be anti-Iraq War. Maybe. But they surely are not opponents of imperial overreach.

Comments

[sloanasaurus]

Would you prefer that the world be dominated by Chinese or Russian imperialism rather than American imperialism? If we wern't doing it they would be.