The U.S. as National Security State
by Dr. Robert P. Abele
February 23, 2011
If a study of U.S. government actions since 9/11/01 teaches anything, it should bring into relief the overall plan of the world’s sole superpower to extend its hegemony to all lands and nations, including our own. A small-scale study of this process of the U.S. evolving into a National Security State could be done in five steps. In addition to outlining those steps, the intent of the present article is to offer four essential elements needed for any solution to this problem of U.S. government dominance in foreign lands and domestically.
Step 1: The Institutional Goal of the Victors of WW II: Preserving the Victory. The idea of hegemony is that of institutional self-interest in dominance. Noam Chomsky calls it “the imperial grand strategy,” and defines it as the U.S. holding “unquestioned power.”2 Andrew Bacevich calls it “Washington Rules,” and defines it as the belief that the U.S. ought to enforce its perceived norms as to how the world should behave, combined with “the sacred trinity” of global military presence, global power projection, and global interventionism.3 Regardless of the term used, it is the U.S. goal to maintain the war’s victory status as pre-eminent world power.
This may be seen as part of the culmination of the understanding of the doctrine of “American Exceptionalism” that started in with President Reagan and culminated in the Bush years—i.e. that the U.S. is not just qualitatively different (the historical meaning), but “better” or “above” others.
Step 2: (Result of step 1): Observe and eliminate any potential competition for hegemony, including that of dissident citizens. This is propagandized as “a threat to our national interests,” when really it is only to the interests of the agents doing the bidding of the state complex. Examples of this abound in just recent history:
a) Reagan’s “War on Terror” in Central America in the 1980’s;
b) The government and media’s rhetoric for those who question U.S. foreign policy as “anti-American” or even “terrorist.” In the old Soviet Union, the operative term for traitors was “anti-Soviet.”
c) The 755 U.S. military bases around the world;
d) The U.S.’s attempted coup of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002;
e) Bush’s “War on Terror” in the 2000’s—Afghanistan and Iraq;
f) Unwarranted domestic spying by the federal government against its own citizens, and its infiltrating progressive groups;
g) The U.S. government attacks on groups such as ACORN, war dissidents in Chicago and Minneapolis, and protestors at the Republican Convention in 2008;
h) Obama’s rebranding of the “war on terror” as “challenges to America’s interest,” while maintaining Bush-era policies of the war on terror.4
Step 3 (Result of Steps 1 & 2): Use of the Idea of Supreme Emergency to preserve and increase hegemony. “Supreme emergency” is defined by political scientist Michael Walzer as a threat that causes a fear beyond the ordinary fears of war, and that that threat and fear may require those measures that the war convention bars.5