American Adventurism Abroad

Michael Sullivan's concise and straightforward volume categorises and describes America's involvement in the affairs of other states big and small since the end of WWII, starting with Greece in 1947, moving through infamous and not so famous episodes in Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, and ending with Haiti in 2004. The book's central thesis is that intervention aimed primarily at securing America's hegemony over the global capitalist system rather than promoting democracy. My main issue with the book is that only the latter, i.e. negative, claim is convincingly substantiated through the multifarious examples of anti-Communist Third World dictators installed and propped up by the US. The former claim isn't really directly sustainable in places like Laos, Yugoslavia, and Grenada, which is perhaps why Sullivan declares at the start that US intervention was more about "upholding the economic system: the idea of capitalism itself" than protecting specific business interests.

And what about security as a motivation for intervention then? The book could have done with a more in-depth exploration -- perhaps a chapter -- of America's "principles" of intervention. Why do they remain consistent over multiple presidencies (save Carter, whom Sullivan hails as a noble exception to the rule)? These are questions a historian would ask.
Posted by kungfuzi at 6:37 pm |