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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
The most urgent political challenge to the world today is how to prevent the so-called “pax Americana” from progressively degenerating, like the 19th-century so-called “pax Britannica” before it, into major global warfare. I say “so-called,” because each “pax,” in its final stages, became less and less peaceful, less and less orderly, more and more a naked imposition of belligerent competitive power based on inequality.
To define this prevention of war as an achievable goal may sound pretentious. But the necessary steps to be taken are above all achievable here at home in America. And what is needed is not some radical and untested new policy, but a much-needed realistic reassessment and progressive scaling back of two discredited policies that are themselves new, and demonstrably counterproductive.
1 Oliver Villar and Drew Cottle, Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror: U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011); Peter Watt and Roberto Zepeda, Drug War Mexico: Politics, Neoliberalism and Violence in the New Narcoeconomy (London: Zed Books, 2012); Mark Karlin, “How the Militarized War on Drugs in Latin America Benefits Transnational Corporations and Undermines Democracy,” Truthout, August 5, 2012.
2 Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 217-37.
3 Patrick Cockburn, “Opium: Iraq's deadly new export,” Independent (London), May 23, 2007.
4 Scott, American War Machine, 134-40.
5 See Mark Karlin, “How the Militarized War on Drugs in Latin America Benefits Transnational Corporations and Undermines Democracy,” Truthout, August 5, 2012.
6 Sekhara Bandyopadhyaya, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2004), 231.
7 Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), 185.
8 “The seed of imperial ruin and national decay - the unnatural gap between the rich and the poor…. the swift increase of vulgar, jobless luxury - are the enemies of Britain” (Winston Churchill, quoted in Phillips, Wealth and Democracy, 171).
9 John A. Hobson, Imperialism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1902; reprint, 1948), 6. The book's chief impact in Britain at the time was to permanently stunt Hobson's career as an economist.
10 Hobson, Imperialism, 12. Cf. Arthur M. Eckstein, “Is There a ‘Hobson-Lenin Thesis’ on Late Nineteenth-Century Colonial Expansion?” Economic History Review, May 1991, 297-318, especially 298-300.
11 Peter Dale Scott, “The Doomsday Project, Deep Events, and the Shrinking of American Democracy,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, J anuary 21, 2011, http://japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3476.
12 See Ralph Raico, “Introduction,” Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2010), http://mises.org/daily/5088/Neither-the-Wars-N or-the-Leaders-Were-Great.
13 Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (G,S,G, & Associates, 1975); Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment (GSG Associates publishers, 1981), http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/New_World _Order/Anglo_American_Estab.html. Discussion in Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, The Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations & United States Foreign Policy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), 12-14; Michael Parenti, Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader, 332.
14 For the little-noticed interest of oil companies in Cambodian offshore oilfields, see Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War (Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation, 2008), 216-37.
15 Thomas Pakenham, Scramble for Africa: The White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876-1912 (New York: Random House, 1991).
16 See the various books by Barbara Tuchman, notably The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (New York: Knopf, 1984).
17 Pakenham, Scramble for Africa.
18 E. Oncken, Panzersprung nach Agadir. Die deutsche Politik wtihrend der zweiten Marokkokrise 1911 (Dilsseldorf, 1981). Panzersprung in German has come to be a metaphor for any gratuitous exhibition of gunboat diplomacy.
19 Thom Shanker, “Global Arms Sales Dropped Sharply in 2010, Study Finds,” New York Times, September 23, 2011.
20 Thom Shanker, “U.S. Arms Sales Make Up Most of Global Market,” New York Times, August 27, 2012.
21 Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 325
22 Robert Dallek, An unfinished life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 2003.). 50.
23 Shanker, “U.S. Arms Sales Make Up Most of Global Market,” New York Times, August 27, 2012.
24 Scott, The Road to 9/11, 33-37.
25 Scott Shane and Andrew W. Lehren, “Leaked Cables Offer Raw Look at U.S. Diplomacy,” New York Times, Hovember 29, 2010. Cf. Nick Fielding and Sarah Baxter, “Saudi Arabia is hub of world terror: The desert kingdom supplies the cash and the killers,” Times (London), 2007, http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/11/saudi-arabi a-is-hub-of-world-terror-the-desert-kingdom- supplies-the-cash-and-the-killers.html.
26 The United Nations has listed the branch offices in Indonesia and the Philippines of the Rabita's affiliate, the International Islamic Relief Organization, as belonging to or associated with al-Qaeda.
27 See Peter Dale Scott, “Bosnia, Kosovo, and Now Libya: The Human Costs of Washington's On-Going Collusion with Terrorists,” Asian- Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 29, 2011; also William Blum, “The United States and Its Comrade-in-Arms, Al Qaeda,” Counterpunch, August 13, 2012, http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/13/tales- of-an-empire-gone-mad/.
28 Christopher Boucek, “Yemen: Avoiding a Downward Spiral,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 12.
29 “In Yemen, ‘Too Many Guns and Too Many Grievances’ as President Clings to Power,” PBS Newshour, March 21, 2011, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/jan-june 11/yemen_03-21.html.
30 Robert Lacey, The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa'ud (New York: Avon, 1981), 346-47, 361.
31 John Kerry, Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia: A Ticking Time Bomb: a Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations (Washington: U.S. G.P.O., 2010), 10.
32 Scott, The Road to 9/11, 152-56.
33 Scott Shane and Andrew W. Lehren, “Leaked Cables Offer Raw Look at U.S. Diplomacy,” New York Times, November 29, 2010.
34 Nick Fielding and Sarah Baxter, “Saudi Arabia is hub of world terror,” Sunday Times (London), November 4, 2007: “Extremist clerics provide a stream of recruits to some of the world's nastiest trouble spots. An analysis by NBC News suggested that the Saudis make up 55% of foreign fighters in Iraq. They are also among the most uncompromising and militant.”
35 Rachel Ehrenfeld, “Al-Qaeda's Source of Funding from Drugs and Extortion Little Affected by bin Laden's Death,” Cutting Edge, May 9, 2011, http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php ?article=51969&pageid=20&pagename=Security.
36 Sunday Times (London), November 4, 2007.
37 BBC, July 17, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18870 130.
38 Al Jazeera, July 19, 2012, http://rn.aljazeera.com/SE/201271012301347496.
39 The Weekly Standard, May 30, 2005, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public /Articles/000/000/005/642eforh.asp. Cf. Newsweek, May 30, 2005. Adapted from Hilmi Isik Advice for the Muslim, (Istanbul: Hakikat Kitabevi).
40 David Ottaway, “The King and Us: U.S.-Saudi Relations in the Wake of 9/11, Foreign Affairs, May-June 2009.
41 Barak Ravid, “U.S. Envoy: Arab Peace Initiative Will Be Part of Obama Policy,” Haaretz, April 5, 2009. David Ottaway, “The King and Us Subtitle: U.S.-Saudi Relations in the Wake of 9/11, Foreign Affairs, May-June 2009.
43 Charles Krauthammer, “At Last, Zion: Israel and the Fate of the Jews,” Weekly Standard, May 11, 1998.
43 “We have no idea how such a wald r wouend,” [Brzezinski] said. “Iran has military capabilities, it could retaliate by destabilizing Iraq” (Salon, March 14, 2012).
44 See Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 183-242; Peter Dale Scott, “Is the State of Emergency Superseding our Constitution? Continuity of Government Planning, War and American Society,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, November 2 8, 2010, http:/1/japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3448.
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