The New American Empire
by Rodrigue Tremblay
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Book Summary Information
Author: Rodrigue TremblayEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-02-24
ISBN: 0741418878
Number of pages: 365
Publisher: Infinity Publishing
Book Reviews of The New American Empire
Book Review: Powerful and Eye-Opening
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent book for understanding the forces behind the "American Empire"
Quotation:
"Political language. . . is designed to make lies
sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an
appearance of solidity to pure wind."
George Orwell, author of "1984"
This is a current affairs book that concentrates on
the "new" world empire that the Bush administration
outlined in its September 20, 2002, "Bush Doctrine"
document. This does not mean that the "old" American
empire should be ignored. This "old" American empire
has been a fixture of the world order ever since the
doctrine of "Manifest Destiny" was invoked to justify
the invasion of Mexico in 1846, and culminated in
1898, when the U.S. provoked a war with Spain in order
to exert its control over Cuba. Therefore, one should
keep in mind this American colonialist and imperialist
past when trying to understand the "new" attempt at
empire building.
The author is right, however, in stressing the fact
that GWB and his neocon advisers have given a whole
new direction to the United States' relations with the
rest of the world, at least as far as the second part
of the 20th Century is concerned. He is also right
that this shift was not "caused" only by the events of
Sept. 11, but had been in preparation and advocated by
neocon ideologues for more than a decade, especially
after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. George W.
Bush himself had planned to invade Iraq long before he
became president on January 20, 2001. Nevertheless,
some observers continue to make the huge mistake of
believing that "the new American empire" was suddenly
born in the ruins of the Twin Towers.
World War I was declared after the Germans jumped on
the "pretext" of the assassination of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand of Austria, in Sarajevo, on June 28, 1914.
Similarly, the Islamist terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, provided the pretext to launch an American-led
war in the Middle East, a war that the pro-Israel
lobby and the oil cartel had been advocating for many
years. Indeed, Iraq was in the sights of the U.S. war
planners for quite some time, as Cheney's April 2001
energy report clearly outlines. For the Bush-Cheney
team and its neocon clique, the true Energy Department
of the United States is the Pentagon. The Sept. 11
events merely provided the political justification and
cover for establishing permanent military bases in the
Middle East in order to control the entire region
militarily, from Egypt to Iran. - During the 2004
presidential debates, Senator John Kerry revealed that
the Bush administration was establishing 14 permanent
military bases in Iraq, but this scoop, strangely
enough, was not picked up by any news media!
What is refreshing is the fact that the author does
not rely on a grand conspiracy theory to explain how
the plans for a new era of U.S. world domination came
about and have finally been implemented. Of course,
there was the Wolfowitz-Perle cabal that he stresses,
but this has been obvious ever since this group of
neocon ideologues sent public letters to President
Clinton in 1998, and to President G. W. Bush in 2001,
publicly advocating the invasion of Iraq and the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. More cogently,
he clearly establises the convergence of big political
and economic interests, between three powerful groups
in the U.S., i.e. the all-powerful pro-Israel lobby,
the pro-oil-industrial and militarist lobby and the
far-right fundamentalist religious groups, all of them
having a stake in getting the United States involved
in the so-called military adventure of "liberating"
the Middle East. All of these powerful groups thought
that the conquest of the modern "Babylon" would be
beneficial to themselves. As Paul Wolfowitz,
Rumsfeld's Deputy Secretary of Defense, ominously
said, "The road to Jerusalem goes through Baghdad!"
The rest is history. This basic analysis is the book's
main contribution.
Another welcome feature I found in Dr. Tremblay's book
is the wider picture that emerges when the author
refers to the principles behind the 1648 "Peace of
Westphalia" principles, which are at the very
foundation of today's system of "nation-states" and of
a peaceful and prosperous world order. With the
current "Bush Imperial Doctrine" and its alleged right
to launch preventive wars "on suspicion", the very
idea of a law-abiding democratic American nation-state
is pushed aside and replaced with the hubris of a
worldwide empire that derives its legitimacy from raw
military power rather than from the consent of the
people. This is a tremendous shift of emphasis that
must have the writers of the U.S. Constitution turning
over in their graves. If it wished to remain
democratic and respectful of the rule of law, the
United States would not aspire to become a vilified
empire but would rather stick to its core democratic
values. For the time being, however, there is a strong
current in the U.S. to transform the republic into an
empire "no matter what", under the watchful eye of a
complacent and Americanized English-speaking "God". In
so doing, the United States risks becoming the first
democracy in modern history to transform itself into
an empire, and possibly an international rogue state,
through the use of military power.
On the whole, this a well-researched and a
well-written, albeit hard-hitting, book that puts
together all the important pieces of the current
geopolitical puzzle of an America paradoxically
becoming more isolationist, more religious, less
moral, less law-abiding and more interventionist
around the world. The author's choice of quotations,
his more than 500 footnotes and his exhaustive
bibliography are impressive and make this book a
must-read.
Summary of The New American Empire
What is behind the American-led war in Iraq? Has the long and uninterrupted march towards globalization and world economic interdependence reached a zenith and begun to regress? What will be the consequences for the United States and for the world? The author explains the fundamental shift that foreign and domestic policies have taken under George W. Bush, since September 11, 2001. Besides attempting to focus a critical light on the new international geopolitical situation against the backdrop of the war in Iraq, the book adopts the larger perspective of the evolution of Western civilization over the last five and a half centuries, that is, since the fall of Constantinople in 1453.Politics Books
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