Power, Profit and Prestige

The author, formerly an American journalist in East Asia and now lecturer on Inter-national Relations at two Paris universities, in this book mainly analyzes the post-Cold War imperial behaviour of “God’s Own Country” - warped as it is by a culture of force and expansion, idealized and justified as “Manifest Destiny”. Golub therefore sees the sun setting rather early on our supposedly American Century while the U.S. continues to see itself as a hegemonic stabilizer or, at worst, a benevolent despot.

For years, the author explained this disaster-in-the-making with articles published in Le Monde diplomatique, and in books like America’s Imperial Longings (2001), American Caesar (2002), US: Inventing Demons (2003), US: the Consensus Splits (2004), US: Slide to Disorder (2005), The Will to Undemocratic Power (2006), and The Politics of Absolute Power (2007): plenty of material for this book.

Few other people realize that American imperialism rather than beginning with Theodore Roosevelt was implanted already in the U.S. Constitution. Did this Constitution not distinguish originally between “people”, “Indians”, and “other persons”, i.e. slaves? Were not 10 of the first 12 American Presidents slave-owners? (p.161) And did American leaders, soon after independence, not wished to annex Cuba and even Canada (p.45), consonant with later Klu Klux Klan fascism?