America: still the world cop?

By Deauwand Myers

I have a professor colleague and friend, a “neo-conservative,” i.e. he articulates a desire to overtly express American power, often through military means. “What are we doing about Syria?” This is the question Senators McCain, Graham (from my home state of South Carolina), and other neocons ask.

McCain and company believe the U.S. must intervene to stop the massacre of Syrian civilians being slaughtered by the Assad dictatorship. “We must arm the rebels. We must provide aid. We must police the situation.”

What are we doing about North Korea? Iran? Cambodia? Myanmar? Equatorial Guinea. The list of rogue nations and bad actors is extensive.

But let’s look at that list again. America has good relations with Equatorial Guinea, a small, oil-rich African nation ruled, mafia style, by the Obiang family. Like many dictators pretending to be democratically-elected presidents, President Teodoro Obiang uses murder, torture, fear, and the vast wealth of his country’s oil reserves to consolidate power.

The same can be said for the monarchical theocracy of Saudi Arabia, where women cannot work, shop, ride a bike, or even leave the house without male consent. America and Saudi Arabia are very close allies. Saddam Hussein was an American ally before he wasn't. So was President Mubarak of Egypt.

American foreign policy has often been schizophrenic, disingenuous, violent, and very much concerned about American and Western European interests: that of oil and unmitigated exploitation of a country’s natural resources. These interests are usually diametrically opposed to democracy (the very reason why America should intervene, according to the neocons ― to spread democracy).

In fact, America has covertly sanctioned, encouraged, or masterminded the supplanting of democratically-elected governments to replace them with puppet dictators. We need look no further than Central or South America, Iran, and the Congo.

America assumed the role of Global Cop after the fall of fascism, and Europe acquiesced. America paid a heavy price for this role: because America protected Western Europe, these nations were able to invest in building societies with large and generous social safety nets: universal healthcare, public transportation, and heavily subsidized higher education ― all the things America doesn't have. Their militaries, and the budgets used to support them, were and are minuscule compared to America’s Playing the Global Cop also helped earn America the hatred of many people, including Muslim extremists.

The hypocrisy of American foreign policy escapes the neocons. We fought to free the world from fascism. Meanwhile, in America, blacks were being hunted down for sport, hanged, raped, tortured, and not allowed to vote or participate in the very democracy many African-Americans fought and died for: in WWII, in the Korean War, and in Vietnam. America incarcerates more people than any nation on Earth, nearly half of its prison population is colored, and four-fifths of the entire American prison population is poor.

While Reagan and Thatcher were fighting the Soviet Union in the Cold War (successfully, I admit), neither of them said a mumbling word about the atrocious injustice going on via apartheid in South Africa. In fact, America and Britain maintained diplomatic and economic ties with the nation, despite many human rights advocates rallying for sanctions against it.

Certainly, America has foreign policy successes: the free and prosperous nations which emerged after WWII and the Korean War, for example.

And surely, we all should be concerned about injustice everywhere. Nonetheless, instead of playing Global Cop, America needs to work on its own social problems at home: Crumbling Infrastructure. The Prison Industrial Complex. Debt. Poverty. Joblessness. Gods build utopian democracies. We aren’t qualified.

The writer holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory and is currently an English university professor outside of Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.