With an occupying army waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with military bases and corporate bullying in every part of the world, there is hardly a question any more of the existence of an American Empire. Indeed, the once fervent denials have turned into a boastful, unashamed embrace of the idea.
Sixty years ago on April 3, 1948, President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan into law. It was the official start of the most important foreign aid undertaking in modern American history - a success that both Democrats and Republicans now praise. Today, with America isolated from old allies and bogged down in an Iraq war costing an estimated $12bn a month, the Marshall Plan provides us with a valuable reminder of what American foreign policy can do when it is based on a genuine liberal internationalism.
Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US. In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive – a sure sign the world's richest country faces economic crisis.
In his famous book, The Collapse of British Power (1972), Correlli Barnett reports that in the opening days of World War II Great Britain only had enough gold and foreign exchange to finance war expenditures for a few months. The British turned to the Americans to finance their ability to wage war. Barnett writes that this dependency signaled the end of British power.
Government reports confirm that half of the working poor, elderly and disabled who lived in New Orleans before Katrina have not returned. Because of critical shortages in low cost housing, few now expect tens of thousands of poor and working people to ever be able to return home.
"Is the American era over?" That was the big question that launched a lengthy analysis by veteran international affairs reporter James Kitfield in the influential ‘National Journal’ last May. Significantly, the article -- which featured interviews with an all-star cast of former top U.S. policy-makers -- was titled "The Decline Begins."
The global economic system has come to be dominated de facto by institutions subscribing to and enforcing the neoliberal agenda. Since the end of World War II, these institutions have sought not only to regulate but, in a manner reminiscent of classical colonialism, to control global resources facilitated by the emergence of the neoliberal state. Consequently, domestic democratic institutions have been negated and civil society movements have been marginalized. Contrary to earlier assumptions about the erosion of state sovereignty in the wake of globalization, a strong state has, in fact, risen not to represent the people's sovereign will but, rather, to fulfill and pursue the corporate-driven neoliberal agenda.
