Facts/Principles on US Empire and the Demand for a Democratic Republic within the Context of Ukraine/Russia

A Movement Has to Define the System to Change It

To have political agency in this world people must define how they perceive their reality. If political power is the goal, and people have no power, it has to be determined and strategized how to grasp that political power. To end forever wars, militarism, poverty, inequality, resolve global issues, and to establish a democratic government, people must rest political power out of the clutches of the elites that seek to profit from conflict to maintain the status quo that is US global empire. In this piece I will lay out some historical facts and principles of my world view. 

These truths give a baseline on the function and structure of our current world: 

The United States (US) is an empire, the global hegemon in the world. 

The US is not a democracy. Its advocation for peace and prosperity in the world is dependent upon whether or not the interests of its empire are served. 

The US has a history of purposefully creating conflicts in the world to serve its interests, or confront challengers to US hegemony. The current crisis surrounding Ukraine is one example. 

The US has no national security threats outside of nuclear war and climate change. By threats I mean societal destruction, or supplanting US military, economic and political power. The US began the arms race after WWII and used them despite knowing the USSR had limited military capabilities at the time. The US was scientifically and industrially leaps and bounds ahead of the Soviets by the time the atom bomb was dropped on Japan. 

The US created the Cold War myth that Russia and China needed to be contained as expansionist powers seeking to build empires. We know now that US intelligence knew this was not true. Both countries were decimated from the violence of war and had no capacity for empire building. Ideologically this was not their goals. The Russians wished all the way back to the early Soviet system when Lenin was in power, to participate and be part of the wider world. With a nuclear-powered US empire, as strong as it was, China and the Soviet Union understood the threat of annihilation was ever present. This drove the Soviet Union, and later China under Mao, to be under the umbrella of the Russian (to develop their own) nuclear weapons for defensive, strategic, and national interest. They viewed correctly, the US as the imperial power which sought to either roll back (destroy) their communist systems, or contain them through isolation and military blockade. 

After World War II, without their mainland destroyed, and having come out of the depression the strongest industrial force in the world, the US was the strongest military power, that allowed it to construct an International political and financial system, as the dominant leader. 

Throughout the Cold War, the US has chosen two different paths toward their enemies China and Russia; containment and rollback, both escalatory policies. President Richard Nixon famously pursued detente towards Russia and China officially with his visit to China in 1972. This was an unofficial end to the Cold War, the beginning of many bilateral Russian/US international agreements on weapons control, and trade much of which occurred under Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and after the fall of the Soviet Union. Of course the US continued policies to disrupt and destroy the Soviets like our intervention in Afghanistan beginning in 1979. A very new Cold War began in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, giving the US definitive unipolar status. 

History tells us that whenever the United States gets involved in conflicts, it only perpetuates the current violence or makes it worse. Diplomacy is chosen by the US when it is in its interest.

The US hasn’t been invaded since the War of 1812 when the British burned down the nation’s capital. Even when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941, in response to our oil embargo against them, that still wasn’t a national security threat. Hawaii was not yet a US state at the time, but the attack did kill American lives. 

So what is the purpose of the US military today if there is no possibility of an invasion of the US because of our nuclear arsenal? I believe the answer to that is maintaining its empire. The US is the main purveyor of violence in world, as much as it was when MLK Jr. gave his speech on Vietnam at Riverside Church. 

MLK was not just fighting for civil rights, or against militarism. He was fighting for democracy. My principles are fundamentally connected to the demand for democracy, something we don’t have in America. 

War is fundamentally opposed to peace. We have an array of international institutions set up by US empire that could be exhausted in the current war in Ukraine, yet NATO and the US have rejected that path, I wonder why. 

You cannot bring about democracy through war. My principles lead me to believe in total non-interventionism. There are International institutions made for diplomacy needed in conflicts like the one in Ukraine right now. Again as MLK Jr. stated, we cannot fight our way to peace. If we want to end US militarism, Americans must have political power. The only way the majority who believe in peace can rest that political power from managers of US empire is by demanding democracy in America. 

In a follow up piece I wish to connect this reality to the history and current conflict in Ukraine.