Dick: J. K. Galbraith and US Autonomous Militarism and Empire.
Alfred McCoy’s Books: In the Shadows of the American Empire; To Govern the Globe.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/10/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-october-6-2021.html
Autonomous Militarism and Empire, Dick Bennett
“Such military activities [invasions of many smaller, weak countries even though they posed no security threat to the US], however remote from any rationally established need, served in an important way the broad purpose of the military establishment. They were visible justification of its eminence and power. . . .the autonomous power of the military establishment.” (John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment, 1992, p. 140; chapters 10 and 11, “The Military Nexus”).
Several decades ago I began to clip reports in mainstream newspapers and magazines generally favorably describing US armed force. Several rooms in my home contain these boxes, although I finally stopped collecting in 2020. I could not possibly keep up, would never be able to assimilate and report on what they unintentionally revealed, in tiny bits and pieces, of US militarism. The task was important to our democracy, if we were to keep it, but a large-budget institute and staff would be required, not only to perform the studies but to ensure the public understood their ominous message. The many academic and NGO organizations that were engaged in such revelations were underfunded and understaffed, and merely nibbling around the edges of unaudited, unbridled US military power and its supportive mainstream media, Congress, and White House.
Meanwhile the people sleepwalked in fear of the enemies constantly constructed by the militarists of the Pentagon, the Democratic and Republican War Party, and of course by all who profited from preparing and sustaining war.
And who were not? The ever-expanding Pentagon budgets, given minimal oversight except to ensure continued domination over the world, brought jobs to every state and most counties in the US. Look closely at almost every niche, nook, and cranny of our society, and you will find the Pentagon pushing to invade, bomb, and kill.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union Cold War enemy hopeful peacemakers spoke of a “peace dividend.” In Galbraith’s view, this hope “underestimated the autonomous character of the military power. . . .The development of weapons systems, now unrelated to a plausible enemy, continued generally as before. Weapons technology was seen to have its own independent and affirming mission. An enemy was useful but not essential.” But just in case, new enemies were created from Afghanistan and Iraq and increasingly to China. “Understanding of politics in our time will continue to require an appreciation of the depth and breadth and influence of the modern military power” (142-3).
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ALFRED MCCOY
In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power by Alfred W. McCoy Haymarket, 2017.
Publisher’s description
Explores the distinctive instruments of American ascent to global domination and hegemony–including covert intervention, client elites, psychological torture, and surveillance.
In a completely original analysis, prize-winning historian Alfred W. McCoy explores America’s rise as a world power—from the 1890s through the Cold War—and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the twenty-first century through a fusion of cyberwar, space warfare, trade pacts, and military alliances. McCoy then analyzes the marquee instruments of US hegemony—covert intervention, client elites, psychological torture, and worldwide surveillance.
Peeling back layers of secrecy, McCoy exposes a military and economic battle for global domination fought in the shadows, largely unknown to those outside the highest rungs of power. Can the United States extend the “American Century” or will China guide the globe for the next hundred years? McCoy devotes his final chapter to these questions, boldly laying out a series of scenarios that could lead to the end of Washington’s world domination by 2030.
· Part of the Dispatch Books series
Reviews
· In the Shadows of the American Century persuasively argues for the inevitable decline of the American empire and the rise of China. Whether or not one is a believer in American power, the case that Alfred McCoy makes—that much of America’s decline is due to its own contradictions and failures—is a sad one. He provides a glimmer of hope that America can ease into the role of a more generous, more collaborative, if less powerful, world player. Let’s hope that Americans will listen to his powerful arguments.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Sympathizer
“[A] brilliant and deeply informed must-read for anyone seriously interested in geopolitics, the history of Empire, and the shape of the future.” —New York Journal of Books
“What is the character of this American empire?” Alfred McCoy asks at the outset of this provocative study. His answer not only limns the contours of the American imperium as it evolved during the twentieth century, but explains why its days are quite likely numbered. This is history with profound relevance to events that are unfolding before our eyes. —Andrew J. Bacevich, author of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History
“Alfred McCoy offers a meticulous, eye-opening account of the rise, since 1945, and impending premature demise of the American Century of world domination. As the empire’s political, economic, and military strategies unravel under cover of secrecy, America’s neglected citizens would do well to read this book.”—Ann Jones, author of They Were Soldiers
“Sobering reading for geopolitics mavens and Risk aficionados alike…” —Kirkus
“McCoy’s detailed, panoramic analysis of the past, present, and future of the American empire covers all spheres of activity including not just land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace, but also the netherworld of covert operations–and seasons all of this with some fascinating personal vignettes. His new book, The Shadows of the American Century, joins the essential short list of scrupulous historical and comparative studies of the United States as an awesome, conflicted, technologically innovative, routinely atrocious, and ultimately hubristic imperial power.”—John Dower, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Embracing Defeat, War Without Mercy, and The Violent American Century
“One of our best and most underappreciated historians takes a hard look at the truth of our empire, both its covert activities and the reasons for its impending decline,” —Oliver Stone
“McCoy’s latest book, In the Shadow of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, provides an autopsy on a dying empire, which has squandered its moral capital by promoting wide-scale torture and mass surveillance….The end of empire scenarios relayed by McCoy in dark terms could in turn provide positive opportunities for societal change as the necessity for constant war is removed.” —The Progressive
I Alfred W. McCoy. To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change. Haymarket, 2021.
In a tempestuous narrative that sweeps across five continents and seven centuries, this book explains how a succession of catastrophes—from the devastating Black Death of 1350 through the coming climate crisis of 2050—has produced a relentless succession of rising empires and fading world orders.
During the long centuries of Iberian and British imperial rule, the quest for new forms of energy led to the development of the colonial sugar plantation as a uniquely profitable kind of commerce. In a time when issues of race and social justice have arisen with pressing urgency, the book explains how the plantation’s extraordinary profitability relied on a production system that literally worked the slaves to death, creating an insatiable appetite for new captives that made the African slave trade a central feature of modern capitalism for over four centuries.
After surveying past centuries roiled by imperial wars, national revolutions, and the struggle for human rights, the closing chapters use those hard-won insights to peer through the present and into the future. By rendering often-opaque environmental science in lucid prose, the book explains how climate change and changing world orders will shape the life opportunities for younger generations, born at the start of this century, during the coming decades that will serve as the signposts of their lives—2030, 2050, 2070, and beyond.