Alfred McCoy: The crumbling delusion of Washington's endless world dominion

By Dilip -

During its first decade as the globe's great hegemon at the close of World War II, Washington quite self-consciously set out to build an apparatus of awesome military power that would allow it to dominate the sprawling Eurasian landmass. With each passing decade, layer upon layer of weaponry and an ever-growing network of military bastions were combined to "contain" communism behind a 5,000-mile Iron Curtain that arched across Eurasia, from the Berlin Wall to the Demilitarized Zone near Seoul, South Korea.

Through its post-World War II occupation of the defeated Axis powers, Germany and Japan, Washington seized military bases, large and small, at both ends of Eurasia. In Japan, for example, its military would occupy approximately 100 installations from Misawa air base in the far north to Sasebo naval base in the south.

Soon after, as Washington reeled from the twin shocks of a communist victory in China and the start of the Korean war in June 1950, the National Security Council adopted NSC-68, a memorandum making it clear that control of Eurasia would be the key to its global power struggle against communism. "Soviet efforts are now directed toward the domination of the Eurasian land mass," read that foundational document. The U.S., it insisted, must expand its military yet again "to deter, if possible, Soviet expansion, and to defeat, if necessary, aggressive Soviet or Soviet-directed actions."…

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/washingtons-endless-world-dominion/

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