In the 1980s the Sandinista government in Nicaragua was attracting wide attention with achieving very significant improvements in health, education and small peasant based farming cooperatives. Some of the development…
A progressive Pentagon? Talk about an oxymoron! The Pentagon continues to grow and surge with ever larger budgets, ever more expansive missions (for example, a Space Force to dominate the heavens and yet more bases in…
In his message to the troops prior to the July 4th weekend, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin offered high praise indeed. “We have the greatest fighting force in human history,”…
The AUSMIN 2023 talks held between the US Secretaries of State and Defense and their Australian counterparts, confirmed the increasing, unaccountable militarisation of the Australian north and its preparation for…
The Doctrine (1823) The doctrine was presented by the 5-th U.S. President James Monroe (1817−1825) in 1823 as an official warning to (West) European powers that any European policy of…
Imperialism has entered a new phase of its expansion to everyday lives of people and the planet. In this new phase of its growth, the grandiose of imperialism permeates everyday…
All around us things are falling apart. Collectively, Americans are experiencing national and imperial decline. Can America save itself? Is this country, as presently constituted, even worth saving? For me,…
Imperialism has always been extremely harmful and dangerous, bringing immense distress, death and destruction. However there are at least seven reasons due to which the present phase of imperialism has…
by Norman Solomon and David Barsamian [The following is excerpted and adapted from David Barsamian’s recent interview with Norman Solomon at AlternativeRadio.org.] David Barsamian: American Justice Robert Jackson was the chief…
Do most people in the USA desire world peace? Like all normal human beings they certainly do, preferring a world of peace and stability to a world of wars and…
In mid-March 2023, David Swanson published a very interesting article: “Iraq and 15 Lessons We Never Learned.” There were some things in there I agreed with, some I disagreed with,…
Over 300 wars! As documented in the Wikipedia timeline of U.S. wars, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations and in the Wikipedia list of wars involving the United States, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States the United States of America…
The Monroe Doctrine was first discussed under that name as justification for the U.S. war on Mexico that moved the western US border south, swallowing up the present-day states of…
“If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.” Sun Tzu “But it turns out there isn’t really any military threat by the…
Originally, the Bush Doctrine was a political phrase with the aim to describe the US foreign policy goals during the 43rd US President George W. Bush (Bush Junior), 2001−2009. The…
Here’s a seldom commented-upon reality of this century and this moment: the United States remains the number-one arms-exporting nation on the planet. Between 2017 and 2021, it grabbed 39% of the total…
To get to where they are, imperial powers will deceive, dissimulate and distort. The US imperium, that most awesome of devilish powers, has tentacled itself across the globe, often unbeknownst…
What’s the U.S. military doing in Africa? It’s an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, straight-jacketed in secrecy, and hogtied by red tape. Or at least it would be if it…
Soon after the Second World War ended, the British government with its vast colonial empire made significant territorial concessions to the USA which could facilitate the rapid spread of USA…
As China unleashed live-fire military exercises off the coast of Taiwan, simulating a real “reunification by force” operation in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ceremonial visit to the island last…
On June 24th, at the think tank, the Hudson Institute, U.S. President Trump’s CIA chief and Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, delivered a 5,000+-word speech, suggesting that America has an…
The U.S. sought to bolster its support in Asia by reassuring nations they do not need to join a coalition against China, drawing a stark contrast with Beijing’s threats to…
An interview with Kwesi Pratt Jr., a journalist and leader of the Socialist Movement of Ghana. In April 2018, the president of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, said that Ghana has “not…
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, the US has been able to exert tremendous influence on other nations through its military and economic power.…
Anyone who grew up in my generation of 1980s kids remembers G.I. Joe action figures — those green-uniformed plastic soldiers you could use to stage battles in the sandbox in your backyard…
Anxiety about the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) toward the Russian border is one of the causes of the current war in Ukraine. But this is not…
Why has the United States already become so heavily invested in the Russia-Ukraine war? And why has it so regularly gotten involved, in some fashion, in so many other wars…
Casualties of America's Never-Ending Global War on Terror Madogaz Musa Abdullah still remembers the phone call. But what came next was a blur. He drove for hours, deep into the…
Putin Changed the Subject, But Confronting Martin Luther King’s "Giant Triplets" Is More Urgent Than Ever I recently participated in a commemoration of Martin Luther King’s address “Beyond Vietnam —…
Regular readers of Countercurrents may recall a recent article I wrote entitled, “Japan’s Concealed Past, Condemned Future” ( https://countercurrents.org/2022/04/japans-concealed-past-condemned-future/). In that article I argued that because the Japanese people had…
One of the many qualifications for the role of president of the United States is to never miss an opportunity to praise the greatness and courage of our men and…
What Would It Take for Military Spending in America to Go Down? A Thought Experiment on the Military-Industrial Complex I have a question for you: What would it take in…
Remember Captain Renault ( Claude Rains) in Casablanca when he had them close Rick's Cafe Americain. Rick (Humphrey Bogart) runs to him and says " Why are ya shutting me…
Since the Korean war, the USA could not pass a reasonable long time without at least one enemy, if not more, around the globe. It constantly finds a foe on…
Three Generations of Conspicuous Destruction by the Military-Industrial Complex In my lifetime of nearly 60 years, America has waged five major wars, winning one decisively, then throwing that victory away,…
In the long and storied history of the United States Army, many young officers have served in many war zones. Few, I suspect, were as sublimely ignorant as I was…
by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies August 2020 U.S. drone strike in Kabul killed 10 Afghan civilians. Credit: Getty Images The Pentagon has finally published its first Airpower…
Terrorist Groups Have Doubled Since the Passage of the 2001 AUMF It began more than two decades ago. On September 20, 2001, President George W. Bush declared a “war on…
This Christmas season, as always, CIA controlled mainstream media is filled with unctuous images of the hungry homeless in America being charitably served food by private citizens and institutions. It…
Professional sports is a cutthroat business. Succeed and the people running the show reap rich rewards. Fail to meet expectations and you get handed your walking papers. American-style war in…
The U.S. military drastically undercounted civilian deaths caused by airstrikes in the Middle East since 2014, according to a New York Times investigation published Saturday. The New York Times reviewed a hidden…
Common knowledge informs us that the surrender of Imperial Japan on August 15, 1945 brought an end to the Japanese empire and Japan’s occupation of all areas and countries that…
As August ended, American troops completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan almost 20 years after they first arrived. On the formal date of withdrawal, however, President Biden insisted that “over-the-horizon capabilities” (airpower and Special Operations…
Australia has formed the anti-China AUKUS (Australia, UK and US) and Quad (Australia, India, US and Japan) Alliances to contain a supposedly aggressive China. In reality a US lackey, nuclear…
“I have sent to the Federal Register for publication the enclosed notice stating that the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13660 of March 6, 2014, with respect to Ukraine…
I was told that a man by the name of John Doe passed through the offices of Argentine congressmen. He wasn’t carrying heavy bags of cash, but only had an…
Get the Marines ready. Store the supplies. Marshal the allies. The United States is getting ready for war (the preferable term in Washington is policing) in the Indo-Pacific region, and…
At the G7 Summit last June, Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison, representing the U.S., United Kingdom and Australia respectively, met in private talks. The subject was how to…
Since the annual U.S. Veterans Day holiday honoring military veterans was just observed on November 11, it seems more than appropriate to suggest the creation of a U.S. Victims Day,…
Who is America’s god? The Christian god of the beatitudes, the one who healed the sick, helped the poor, and preached love of neighbor? Not in these (dis)United States. In…
If Americans could only imagine what it was like for the citizens of thirteen much smaller nations to have been bombed and invaded by the American veterans who are celebrated…
I waited almost three months for some acknowledgement, but it never came. Not a bottle of champagne. Not a congratulatory note. Not an email of acknowledgement. Not one media request. Authors…
The Arab word’s a veritable mess. The cosmic leadership deficit, the absence of legitimate institutions, the lack of transparency, disrespect for human rights, abysmal regard for gender equality, and too…
As the British before them, US imperial propaganda treats itself as the victim and those they invaded and occupied as the criminal On August 18th, shortly after the Taliban took…
Canada was born of empire and still thrives within that milieu. It is the progeny of French and British imperial quests in the ‘New’ World and is accompanied by its…
As the war on terror stands struck in the ruins of Afghanistan, more attention will be given hopefully to repairing the fault lines which caused the debacle. Ominously , however,…
The anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was marked by days of remembrances — for the courageous rescue workers of that moment, for the thousands murdered as the Twin Towers collapsed,…
The bad news stemming from the ill-planned and ill-managed U.S. evacuation of the Afghan capital just kept coming in. The Washington Post put it this way in blowing the whistle on the culminating disaster:…
What a way to end a war! Apologies all around! We’re so damn sorry — or actually, maybe not! I’m thinking, of course, about CENTCOM commander General Kenneth F. McKenzie,…
As a parting shot, on its way out of Afghanistan, the United States military launched a drone attack that the Pentagon called a “righteous strike.” The final missile fired during…
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