MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Our primary "national interest" should be nurturing a robust democracy, not engaging in millitarized conflicts around the world. (Photo: U.S. Pacific Fleet )

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I don't know how many times "the national interest" was mentioned or implied in the three presidential debates, but if I were having one of those drinking contests where you down a shot of alcohol every time a word or phrase is mentioned or alluded to, I would have ended with more vodka than blood pulsing through my veins.

I've discussed before how disingenuous it is of the pundits and the politicians to utter the words "the national interest" in intonations normally reserved for grave and somber responsibilities. In an officially secular nation, the phrase is often spoken with a sacredness that is reserved for divinities. After all, our democracy -- at least in federal elections -- is supposed to be, if we pick a singular public policy issue, focused on protecting and enhancing "the national interest."

That's because the phrase "national interest" is generally code for the sum total of the wealth and comfort of upper-middle-class and wealthy Americans. Keep in mind that the US accounts for more than 40 percent of the world's wealth. And according to a 2010 article in the New York Times, the US and Europe together have amassed 70 percent of the planets' financial assets. That's an important point, when you look at the presidential debates and how significant NATO is in Hillary Clinton's "national interest" worldview. The US "national interest" and European national interests represent not a thirst for spreading democracy, but the replacement of colonial ownership of less-developed countries with the more modern world of global financial dominance. This is essentially colonialism under a new economic framework, with independent governments that are beholden to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and financial subjugation by the West.

Given that "the national interest" of monetary and asset accumulation -- and ensuring, as just one example, the growth of such US mainstays as malls filled with merchandise to make the "haves" feel more prosperous -- is dependent upon a robust military. These forces are deployed around the world to ensure access to raw materials and suppress the emergence of true democracies that challenge US hegemony in the world. Therefore, it is completely understandable that so many candidates for national office link "the national interest" with a military deployment that spans the world. A 2015 article from TomDispatch (reprinted on Truthout) stated it quite succinctly: "The United States probably has more foreign military bases than any other people, nation, or empire in history." Of course, our most "reliable" allies are our partners in dividing the world's assets and cheap labor: European nations who participate in military coalition campaigns with the US.

There's nothing gentle about the "soft power" doctrine energetically espoused by Hillary Clinton, US Representative to the UN Samantha Power and National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who were reportedly very influential in President Obama's decision to lead a bombing and covert campaign to depose Muammar Gaddafi. "Soft Power" is just a euphemistic way of justifying armed actions to eliminate or destabilize any government that poses a threat to "the US national interest." Which of the nations that the US publicly or covertly targets around the globe actually pose a direct, immediate threat to what passes for democracy here at home? It's a question we must ask ourselves -- and ask our leaders.

However, empires can't sustain themselves forever. Eventually, they extend their warfare to a point that they collapse.

David Vine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American University, wrote in the TomDispatch article cited above:

Rarely does anyone ask if we need hundreds of bases overseas.... Rarely does anyone wonder how we would feel if China, Russia, or Iran built even a single base anywhere near our borders, let alone in the United States.

“Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld,” Chalmers Johnson insisted, “one can’t begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.” Alarmed and inspired by his work and aware that relatively few have heeded his warnings, I’ve spent years trying to track and understand what he called our “empire of bases.” While logic might seem to suggest that these bases make us safer, I’ve come to the opposite conclusion: in a range of ways our overseas bases have made us all less secure, harming everyone from US military personnel and their families to locals living near the bases to those of us whose taxes pay for the way our government garrisons the globe....

We may think such bases have made us safer. In reality, they’ve helped lock us inside a permanently militarized society that has made all of us—everyone on this planet—less secure, damaging lives at home and abroad.

In short, policies meant to maintain a wealthy empire for the wealthy -- and the upper-middle class -- eventually erode the empire itself. In fact, if a democracy in the US -- and use your imagination here, because we are leaving the reality zone for a moment -- elected a national government that opposed a global military enterprise (including companies and individuals that become enormously rich through Pentagon and "Homeland Security" subcontracting), that imagined democracy would itself be deemed to exist in opposition to what is now perceived as "the national interest."

We don't fight for democracy. Democracy is expected -- through a corporate carnival of electioneering -- to support "the national interest." This means that when it comes to the public policy objectives of our political leaders, bullets are much more significant than ballots.

Not to be reposted without the permission of Truthout.