Sarkawt Imad Karim | Exclusive to Ekurd.net

Nations are always at work to secure their national interests. And in doing so, some nations adopt methods such as Diplomacy, Treaties, and Trade to secure their national interests, while some others particularly the one with strongest military and economic resources such as USA, use a variety of means starts from Propaganda, Economic punishment and rewards, Alliances and at times coercive means and wars, to achieve their national interest goals.

Just as any other country, the goal of American foreign policy is to advance American interests around the world. However, what interests USA promoted have been different with the time and place. This has usually meant promoting the business interests of American-based multinationals in all legal sectors, changing unfriendly but legitimate governments and regimes through force and coups, and blocking the way and discouraging other countries from producing or buying advanced weapons or getting too militaristic without its (USA) express approval.

It also meant pushing foreign development that generally profits American businesses, and at the same time keeping down the military and economic power of its political competitors and foes, and to some degree limiting that of its allies (The S-400 deal of Turkey with Russia) in order to make the most wealth as possible and yet maintain American hegemony over the world. The result of these foreign policies has made America one of the strongest and richest nations of the world. However, these policies have also resulted in harming the interests of other nations including the overthrow of many democratically elected governments (Ex: Iranian Democratic government of Mohammad Mosadagh,1952).

Historically speaking, Americans have fought many wars against its perceived enemies since World War Two over its national interests. But many wars America fought were mostly against weaker and smaller nations that are rich in natural resources. It means USA has fought some wars merely for resources, exploitation and profits but covered up its real intentions with different excuses from US citizens and the whole world in general.

In fact, America always had a political system in which the political parties and party leaders were financed by rich businessmen and corporations. After coming to power, the political parties do everything in their power to enrich their financiers. And many US citizens have come to realize that their government has fought some wars for immoral and unjust causes and purely for the personal benefits of some rich USA businessmen.

According to an article titled “Why We Seek War” published in 2004 by Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, America is a nation that constantly seeks war, and if it doesn’t change it could end up destroying itself. Given all the wars the United States has waged, “It is preposterous but true that we do not see ourselves as a nation that seeks war,” writes Lawrence Velvel. “We see ourselves as a peace loving nation” and that message is constantly drummed into the public by government and media.

Furthermore, Velvel argues that since World War Two, the U.S. has fought the Korean War, the Vietnam War, secret wars in Laos and Cambodia, the First Gulf War, Afghanistan, and the Second Gulf War in Iraq. It has also invaded, bombed or “quarantined” Panama, Grenada, Cuba, Haiti, Somalia, the Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia and Libya, and has “declared” a global war on terrorists.

“If the United States were a man instead of a country, we would say he must be schizophrenic, or at minimum deeply mentally disturbed, to believe he is peace loving in the face of a record like this,” Velvel writes in “The Long Term View,” a journal of informed opinion published by his law school.

Velvel further notes the U.S. today spends more on military than perhaps all the rest of the world put together and definitely more than the next 21 highest-spending nations combined, including China, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Israel.

Not only do Americans always appear to be at war but they believe they fight only in good causes, he writes. “We believe we at all times fight only to do God’s work, and that we therefore have to fight or democracy, freedom, and economic affluence will be lost,” Velvel writes. He says truth cannot be permitted to intrude “because it would destroy our self-image.”

“Certainly much of the rest of the world—probably most of the rest of the world—does not see us as peace loving.” Gulf War II, Velvel notes, is having the opposite impact on public opinion the U.S. intended. “It has caused Muslims—the Arab ‘street,’ in particular—to hate our guts even more than they already did.”

Among the reasons USA fights so often, Velvel writes, are economic imperialism, a desire to remain preeminent, the glorification of war by the media, hubris, the stupidity of the nation’s leaders and the failure to prosecute them for their war crimes, and the inability to learn from past errors.

Writing of economic imperialism, Velvel reminds that in 1898 Americans realized the nation’s capacity to produce had outrun the domestic market’s capacity to consume and that a vibrant economy required overseas markets and coaling stations for the Navy warships that would protect overseas trade. “Nothing has really changed, except that today we call it globalization and defend it as bringing wealth to all when in fact it has worsened the dire poverty of many.”

Gulf War I, he writes, “was fought for oil, not to stop tyranny despite President Bush 1’s lying efforts to portray it as a fight for freedom in Kuwait—which is at best an autocracy.”

Velvel judges that many, if not most, Americans “are loathe to admit that we are an imperialist power, but it inarguably has been true since 1898. (Year of the Spanish-American War.)”

He goes on to warn that, “It is only we, not any enemy, who are going to end up crippling our own country through constant warfare if we do not get off the warmongering kick we have been on for at least 100 years.” Velvel quotes President Lincoln’s words on the subject that, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Velvel concludes that the idea that the U.S. favors war too much and engages in military action too much does not mean that he is a pacifist. “It is based not on a view that we must never kill anyone, but rather on the view that we too often choose to kill people—far too many people—and that we do so for insufficient reasons, with far too few good results and, too often, very bad results.”

All these war experience America has gone through shows that the US doesn’t mind to go ahead and step on all ethical and legal boundaries just so to secure its national interests regardless of harming the interests of other nations in between. Clearly for USA the end justify the means regardless how many innocent lives lost and how much wealth and property of others damaged in the way. It wants every country to help securing its interests and submitting to its leadership, and those who don’t, will simply be punished in different ways including invasion.

Living in 21 century, I thought we lived in the world that nations interact with one another under civilized and humane principles such as justice, respect, equal rights and diplomacy, but I thought wrong. The strong rules the weak. It’s the law of the jungle that applies to us today. The richest nation with the strongest military like America gets to dictate how the world is run regardless of right and wrong. The US has nothing to offer the world in morals or values, certainly not their unfair, immoral, conning, uncivilized, coercive and backward attitude and methods of securing its national interests around the globe.

Sarkawt Imad Karim, a Kurdish writer from Iraqi Kurdistan.

The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Ekurd.net or its editors.

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