America and the world [Archives:2004/789/Opinion]

For a good part of its 216 year history, the United States often adopted an isolationist policy, in which the newly created nation saw no reason that it should be party to any of the global conflicts that ensued in the rest of the world. It further went on to ensure that the countries of the Eastern Hemisphere should stay out all together of any events that were occurring in the Western Hemisphere. As such it was able to concentrate on its own expansion and economic and political development. As World War I dragged indecisively in Europe and the Middle East, the United States partially goaded by Zionist interests that have evolved in the United States with considerable political and economic clout was thrust in full force into the war. The Zionists have convinced the British that they could encourage American involvement in the war, if the British Government promised to facilitate the establishment of a “national home” for the Jews in Palestine. The British and French have both heretofore agreed to divide up the Middle East into respective British and French “Mandates”. Both sides kept their end of the bargains amidst significant opposition by many Americans, who felt that America has no interest in getting pitted in European power clashes, emanating from ambitious imperialism drives. Of course, the Balfour Declaration was not made public as the sole mitigating circumstance that brought the United States into the war. On the contrary, the American involvement was sold to the American public as a necessity to defend “freedom and democracy”.
In World War II, America was attacked by Japan and that was sufficient reason to bring the United States into the global conflict. Without a doubt, United States involvement changed the balance heavily in favor of the allies that were fighting the Axis Powers (Germany, Japan and Italy). The victory changed the role for the United States in the international theater from a standby onlooker to a major player in the global ideological division that prevailed, as the Soviet Union also took on the role of the Second leading world power and came out with significant territorial outreach. With the Cold War, the world achieved some relative peace and stability, except for the contained conflicts that emerged here and there, some of which were incited by the international ideological split. In this aura, many countries, especially the former colonies that emerged as the colonial powers relinquished their territorial holdings in Asia and Africa and even some of the Latin American states, managed to insure their sovereignty by assembling into a non-aligned bloc. This bloc of small and relatively powerless countries enjoyed the friction between the East and West Bloc to assure their independence and to embark on their development agendas. Few of these countries evolved into healthy and developing states. Most of them, however evolved into dictatorships with poor economies and depressing human and social conditions, which offered little hope for any respite for the majority of their populations. In the meantime, most of the western economies, powered by an American Marshall Plan were able to come out of the destruction and social upheavals left after the Second World War and actually went on to be very active economies enjoying prosperous growth and access to all the increasing amenities brought about by newly developed modern consumer goods that satisfied the comfort desires and entertainment quests of most of the citizens.
Some of this economic prosperity filtered down to some of the non-major economies of the world, especially those of East Asia and from the Eastern Bloc China. However, the leading power in the East Bloc, was unable to keep pace with its competitors in the West, especially the United States. Because of the Soviet's persistence in maintaining military parity with its adversaries and the cumbersome red tape that set in to enforce scientific socialism, the collapse of the Soviet Union became eminent, and with it the Communist Empire it defiantly tried to hold on for many years.
The Cold War was over, but the world was not to see the peace and tranquility that was hoped for, as the World sought to create a New World Order that was supposedly to remove the obstacles to relieving the world of the many social ills and economic disequilibrium suffered by many of the countries of the world in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
However, the Middle East was still embroiled in the conflict that emanated from the Balfour Declaration, which created a new state born out of Zionist chauvinism that insists on the right of ethnic dislocation in the pursuit of mythical persuasions that have no regard for the rights of the indigenous population of the land that was to become not only the “national home” for the Jews, but the bastion of an aggressive land hungry society, with no end to its right of territorial expansion and no mercy to anyone that could stand in its way, not withstanding their historical and legitimate rights to the very same land. Not even ethnic kinship prevented the Zionist movement from recognizing the rights of their Arab cousins in the land deemed to be their sole gift from God. As if God would sanction an injustice for the sole purpose of satisfying chauvinistic drives that have no basis in any theological persuasion or moral and legitimate statutes.
Because of this conflict, and all the bitterness the world witnessed the outgrowth of extreme dogma that sought to correct an injustice by the application of unorthodox and similarly irrational dogmatic attachment also based on spiritual doctrine. With the rapid spread of disillusionment at the inability of the dominating power that came out the victor of the Cold War to set in a new World Order based on sound moral grounds and equitable treatment for all mankind, a new world conflict emerged with undefined role players with global reach claiming their own spiritual objectives and a US that was determined to eke out the maximum benefit of its victory and unlimited power. In a world like this, there is really no telling where mankind is heading, but there is no slight evidence of the world moving on the right track.
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