Wednesday, April 16, 2008

US policy has reached 'a point where its global hegemony could be opposed by a multi-polar world'

 
The book by John Quigly puts together the catalogue of America's interventionist adventures and misadventures abroad which has made it hated among the states of the world albeit without lessening its influence.

Exercising the US role of 'master of the situation', President Theodore Roosevelt claimed a right to intervene in any Latin country that defaulted on its public debt. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson sent the Marines to occupy the Dominican Republic, arguing that Germany, which was conducting operations in the Atlantic Ocean, might take it over if the US stayed out. In 1846, the US president asked Congress to declare war on Mexico, telling it that Mexico had invaded US territory and 'shed American blood on American soil'.

In November 1918, when the armistice ending the war was signed with Germany, the allied troops in Russia thought they would be able to go home. But Wilson left them there to fight the Soviet troops. By early 1919, the US had 5,000 troops in the northern Russian theatre. Only in January 1919, six months after the intervention began, Wilson publicly acknowledged that the aim was to overthrow the Bolsheviks.
 
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It is this jurisprudence of American foreign policy conduct that compelled its European allies to remove support from America's ultimate invasion of Iraq in 2003. The policy and doctrine of intervention may have finally taken the US in 2008 to a point where its global hegemony could be opposed by a multi-polar world.
 

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