North Meridian Press
US. IMPERIALISM AND IRAN: A
History of the Killing Today,” Essay,
Harry Targ.
Mar 13
Introduction:
Contemporary United States foreign policy reveals the persistence of what
critics have long described as a permanent war economy, sustained by political
institutions that show little willingness to challenge the expansion of
militarism. Even in moments of crisis, when the possibility of wider conflict
becomes visible, the response from major political actors often reflects
continuity rather than dissent. The leadership of the Democratic Party, for
example, has largely failed to mount a sustained objection to Donald Trump’s
escalating confrontation with Iran. A small number of dissident voices such as
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Bernie Sanders stand as
exceptions. Yet what is perhaps more striking is the broader silence that
surrounds these debates at the local level. Democratic Party organizations and
activist formations, including groups such as Indivisible, have too often
remained muted at precisely the moment when grassroots pressure might shape
public discourse. For local activists, the challenge is to recognize the deep
connection between domestic economic struggles, the mobilization of voters on
election day, and the larger questions of war and peace that define our
political moment.
Understanding this silence requires confronting both the structural
foundations of United States imperial policy and the political culture that
sustains it. The institutional architecture of American power, including the
vast military and economic apparatus that undergirds global projection,
produces incentives that normalize intervention and conflict. Yet structure
alone cannot explain the persistence of policies that generate widespread
suffering abroad. The willingness of political elites to accept, justify, or
ignore the human consequences of these policies suggests a deeper crisis of
moral and political judgment among those who manage the machinery of state
power.
If meaningful political change is to emerge, opposition must therefore
confront the permanent war economy at its roots. This requires not only
resisting specific policies but challenging the leadership networks that
continue to reproduce militarism as a central feature of American political
life. Such a project also demands a recognition of the human toll of U.S.
policy across the globe. From Iran and Gaza to Venezuela, Cuba, Nigeria, and
beyond, communities have experienced the destructive consequences of sanctions,
military force, and economic coercion. Any movement committed to peace must
begin with a clear acknowledgment of these realities and with a renewed effort
to build political pressure capable of transforming both domestic priorities
and foreign policy commitments.
U.S. Imperialism in the Beginning:
Modern imperialism is intimately connected to the globalization of
capitalism, the quest for enhanced military capabilities, geopolitical
thinking, and ideologies of national and racial superiority. The rise of the
United States empire occurred as the industrial revolution spread to North
America after the civil war. Farmers began to produce agricultural surpluses
requiring overseas customers, factories were built to produce iron, steel,
textiles, and food products, railroads were constructed to traverse the North
American continent, and financiers created large banks, trusts, and holding
companies to parley agricultural and manufacturing profits into huge
concentrations of cash.
Perhaps the benchmark of the U.S. emergence as an imperial power was the
Spanish/Cuban/American war. The U.S. established its hegemony in the Western
Hemisphere, replacing the Spanish and challenging the British, and became an
Asian power, crushing rebellion and planting its military in the Philippines.
The empire has grown, despite resistance, to this day.
While U.S. expansion occurs wherever a vacuum of power exists, and an
opportunity to formally or informally control a regime and/or territory,
particular countries have had enduring salience for the U.S. Iran is such a
country.
Figure 1: Scale of Significance for U.S. Imperialism, North Meridian
Press, 2026.
Scale of Significance for U.S. Imperialism
To help understand the attention U.S. policy-makers give some countries,
it is possible to reflect on what is called here the Scale of Significance for
U.S. Imperialism (SSUSI). The SSUSI has three interconnected dimensions that
relate to the relative importance policymakers give to some countries compared
to others.
First, as an original motivation for expansion, economic interests are
primary. Historically, United States policy has been driven by the need to
secure customers for U.S. products, outlets for manufacturing investment
opportunities, opportunities for financial speculation, and vital natural
resources.
Second, geopolitics and military hegemony matter. Empires require ready
access to regions and trouble spots all around the world. When Teddy Roosevelt,
as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Vice President, and President of the United
States, articulated the first warning of the need for global power he spoke of
the development of a “two-ocean” navy. The U.S., he said, must become an
Atlantic and a Pacific power; thus prioritizing the projection of military
power in the
Western Hemisphere and Asia. If the achievement of global power was
dependent upon resources drawn from everywhere, military and political hegemony
in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, and parts of Africa also required
attention.
Third, as the imperial project grows, certain political regimes and
cultures take on particular importance for policymakers and the American
people. Foreign policy elites claim that the U.S. has a special responsibility
for them. If these roles are rejected by the targeted country, the experience
burns itself into the consciousness of the people. For example, Cuba was seen
by U.S. rulers as far back as Thomas Jefferson as soon to be part of the United
States. Cuba’s rejection of this presumption of U.S. tutelage has been a scar
on the U.S. sense of itself ever since the spread of revolutionary ferment on
the island.
Sixty Years of Blowback: Iran
Chalmers Johnson wrote in 2001 about “blowback” that it “is a CIA
term first used in March 1954 in a recently declassified report on the 1953
operation to overthrow the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. It is a
metaphor for the unintended consequences of the US government's international
activities that have been kept secret from the American people. The CIA's fears
that there might ultimately be some blowback from its egregious interference in
the affairs of Iran were well founded.…. This misguided ‘covert operation’ of
the US government helped convince many capable people throughout the Islamic
world that the United States was an implacable enemy.” (The Nation,
October 15, 2001).
The CIA initiated overthrow of the regime of Mohammed Mossadegh sixty
years ago on August 19, 1953, was precipitated by what Melvin Gurtov called
“the politics of oil and cold war together.” Because it was the leading oil
producer in the Middle East and the fourth largest in the world and it was
geographically close to the former Soviet Union, President Eisenhower was
prevailed upon to launch the CIA covert war on Iran long encouraged by Great
Britain.
The immediate background for the ouster of Mossadegh was Iran’s
nationalization of its oil production. Most Iranians were living in poverty in
the 1940s as the Iranian government received only ten percent of the royalties
on its oil sales on the world market. The discrepancy between Iran’s large
production of oil and the limited return it received led Prime Minister
Mohammed Mossadegh, a liberal nationalist, to call for the nationalization of
the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. Despite opposition from Iran’s small
ruling class, the parliament and masses of the Iranian people endorsed the plan
to seize control of its oil. Mossadegh became the symbol of Iranian
sovereignty.
Figure 2: Iranian PM Mohammad Mossadegh at the Liberty Bell (Oct 22,
1951), viewing the bell as a symbol of freedom during his trip to defend Iran’s
nationalized oil.
Ironically, Mossadegh assumed the United States would support Iran’s move
toward economic autonomy. But, in Washington, the Iranian leader was viewed as
a demagogue, his emerging rival the Shah of Iran (the sitting monarch of Iran)
as “more moderate.”
After the nationalization, the British, supported by the United States,
boycotted oil produced by the Iranian Oil Company. The British lobbied
Washington to launch a military intervention but the Truman Administration
feared such an action would work to the advantage of the Iranian Communists,
the Tudeh Party.
The boycott led to economic strains in Iran, and Mossadegh compensated
for the loss of revenue by increasing taxes on the rich. This generated growing
opposition from the tiny ruling class, and they encouraged political
instability. In 1953, to rally his people, Mossadegh carried out a plebiscite,
a vote on his policies. The Iranian people overwhelmingly endorsed the
nationalization of Iranian oil. In addition, Mossadegh initiated efforts to
mend political fences with the former Soviet Union and the Tudeh Party.
As a result of the plebiscite, and Mossadegh’s openings to the Left, the
United States came around to the British view; Mossadegh had to go. As one U.S.
defense department official put it:
“When the crisis came on and the thing was about to collapse, we violated
our normal criteria and among other things we did, we provided the army
immediately on an emergency basis….The guns that they had in their hands, the
trucks that they rode in, the armored cars that they drove through the streets,
and the radio communications that permitted their control, were all furnished
through the military defense assistance program…. Had it not been for this
program, a government unfriendly to the United States probably would now be in
power.” (Richard Barnet, Intervention and Revolution, 1972).
The Shah, who had fled Iran after the plebiscite, returned when Mossadegh
was ousted. A new prime minister was appointed by him who committed Iran to the
defense of the “free” world. U.S. military and economic aid was resumed, and
Iran joined the CENTO alliance (an alliance of pro-West regional states).
In August, 1954, a new oil consortium was established. Five U.S. oil
companies gained control of forty percent of Iranian oil, equal to that of
returning British firms. Iran compensated the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company for its
losses by paying $70 million, which Iran received as aid from the United
States. The Iranian ruling class was accorded fifty percent of profits from
future oil sales. President Eisenhower declared that the events of 1953 and
1954 were ushering in a new era of “economic progress and stability” in Iran
and that it was now to be an independent country in “the family of free
nations.”
In brief, the United States overthrew a popularly elected and
overwhelmingly endorsed regime in Iran. The payoff the United States received,
with British acquiescence, was a dramatic increase in access by U.S. oil
companies to Iranian oil at the expense of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The
overthrow of Mossadegh and the backing of the return of the Shah to full
control of the regime led to U.S. support for one of the world’s most
repressive and militarized regimes. By the 1970s, 70,000 of the Shah’s opponents
were in political prisons. Workers and religious activists rose up against the
Shah in 1979, leading to the rapid revolutionary overthrow of his military
state.
As Chalmers Johnson suggested many years later, the United States role in
the world is still plagued by “blowback.” Masses of people all across the
globe, particularly in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, and East Asia, regard
the United States as the major threat to their economic and political
independence. And the covert operation against Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran is
one place where such global mistrust began.
Hybrid Wars Against Iran
So, Iran has been a country of particular concern of the United States at
least since the end of World War II. As suggested above, the US propped up the
Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) at the outset of the war to protect US bases which
were used to transfer war materials to the former Soviet Union. After Prime
Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, elected in 1951, nationalized Iran’s valuable oil
resource, Great Britain, whose Anglo-Iranian Oil Company had “owned “ the oil,
began to urge the US to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister,
instill full power in the monarch, the Shah, and reprivatize Iranian oil. In
1953 the US Central Intelligence Agency launched a coup to overthrow the Prime
Minister and to establish the Shah as Iran’s all-powerful dictator. His
brutality and repression lasted for years until a mass-based worker and
religious-led movement ousted him from power in 1979. In the aftermath of the
ouster of the Shah, religious leaders consolidated their control of the state,
the Shah fled to the United States for medical treatment, the new regime
demanded his return to stand trial for his crimes, and Iranian students took 52
US embassy personnel hostage for 444 days.
The United States responses to the transformation of the Iranian regime
included President Carter’s declaration of his “doctrine,” which proclaimed
that instabilities in the Persian Gulf region were vital to US national
security. The US began to fund Iraq in its eight-year bloody war against Iran,
which led to 500,000 Iranians killed. The United States urged Israel to invade
Lebanon, escalate attacks on Palestine, and in general tilted in opposition to
Iran and its allies in the region. The US also increased the sale of
technologically sophisticated arms to Saudi Arabia. Therefore in the 1980s, US
policy in the Persian Gulf and Middle East regions was driven by the growing
hostility of Iran to the United States (once a pillar of US support in the
Persian Gulf), the continued need of Europe and Japan for Iranian oil, and
Iran’s vital geographic location, particularly in terms of its potential
control of the flow of oil to Europe and Japan. But, in
addition, the Iranian people had violated a cardinal rule of US global
hegemony. They had risen up against rule by an American puppet. Much like Cuba
in the Western Hemisphere, Iranians declared that they no longer would abide by
a leader chosen by the United States and not them. (In fact, in the Nixon
Administration, the Shah’s regime was identified as the key “gendarme” state in
the Persian Gulf, the local US police enforcer).
Ever since the hostage crisis of 1979, the United States has imposed
economic sanctions of one sort or another on Iran. After the long years of
damage to the Iranian economy and the people at large, the Nuclear
Treaty of 2015 (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), was negotiated by
Iran, the United States, member countries of the European Union, and Security
Council members, Russia and China. Along with Iran’s promise to stop
the production of potential nuclear material, signatories agreed to end the freezing
of Iranian assets deposited in US and European banks, to eliminate various
prohibitions on Western investment in the Iranian economy, and to remove trade
restrictions.
Almost immediately after the sanctions were lifted in the aftermath of
the Nuclear Treaty, the Iranian economy grew: a 12 percent growth in GDP in
2016 and an additional but modest 3.7 percent in 2017. However, in 2018
President Trump withdrew from the Nuclear Treaty and re-imposed crippling
sanctions. As a result, the Iranian economy contracted by 4.8 percent in 2018
and in a BBC report projected a further decline of 9.5 percent in 2019.
Iran’s oil exports and hence production was hit particularly hard. The
value of Iranian currency declined dramatically and inflation in the country
rose, particularly for the price of food. (BBC News. “Six Charts That Show
How Hard US Sanctions Have Hit Iran,” December 2, 2019). Sanctions reduced
purchasing power, increased the cost of living for food and transportation,
reduced access of Iranian students studying abroad to financial resources, and
led to the reduction of public services.
This is the story of hybrid war against Iran: along with military threats
and attempts to isolate Iran diplomatically, make the people suffer and cause
increased outrage at the material conditions of life. The hope is that the
people will rise up and overthrow the regime in power (and, of course,
instances of corruption and repression will magnify protest responses).
The scenario has been repeated over and over: Guatemala and Iran in the early
1950s, Cuba since 1960, and now Venezuela and Iran again. And make
no mistake about it: economic sanctions are targeted against civilian
populations and constitute a strategy of war against the people, motivating
them to rise up against their governments.
Returning to SSUSI and Iranian Relations
As an emerging global power, United States needs for natural resources,
customers for consumer and military products, investment opportunities, and
outlets for energy companies grew throughout the twentieth century. One of the
significant historical junctures in the transfer of economic and geopolitical
power in the world from the declining British empire and the rising U.S. empire
was the agreement to redistribute control of Iranian oil in 1954. The
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was obliged to share Iranian oil with the then five
U.S. oil giants.
As U.S. oil needs and those of its friends in Europe increased, control
of the Persian Gulf region and access to its oil became more vital.
Furthermore, since a hostile Iran could control the Strait of Hormuz, the
Iranian revolution of 1979 posed an increasing geopolitical problem for
American dominance.
The impulse in 1979 to send U.S. troops to save the Shah’s regime was
driven by both economics and geopolitics. It was only because other Carter
advisers disagreed with the National Security Advisor on the possibility of
saving the Shah that a U.S. intervention stalled in 1979. But in 1980 an
Iraq/Iran war provided an opportunity, it was hoped, to weaken Iran’s potential
control of the region.
Finally, the U.S. decision-makers since 1953 saw a special relationship
between this country and Iran. The U.S. put the Shah in power, plied him with
enormous military power, encouraged and facilitated significant cultural
exchanges, and defined his regime as a junior partner in policing the region.
The rapidity of the Shah’s overthrow and the anger expressed by the
Iranian people about its historic relationship to the American people
communicated to the world declining U.S. power. Consequently, U.S. hostility to
Iran in subsequent decades using a variety of issues including processing
uranium is not surprising.
The US Pursuit of Empire
Taking “the long view” of United States foreign policy, it is clear that
from NSC-68; to the response to the Soviet challenges in space such as during
the Sputnik era; to global wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; to
covert interventions in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, the
United States has pursued global hegemony. And foreign policy influentials,
such as a recent Council on Foreign Relations position paper suggests, regard
the maintenance of global power the main priority of foreign policy in the
years ahead. It is also clear that the pursuit of empire has, of necessity,
involved the creation of a permanent war economy, an economy that overcomes
economic stagnation by the infusion of enormous military expenditures.
It is also clear that justification for empire and military spending has
necessitated the construction of an enemy, first the Soviet Union and
international communism; then terrorism; and now China and most recently Iran.
The obverse of a demonic enemy requires a conception of self to justify the
imperial project. That self historically has been various iterations of
American exceptionalism, the indispensable nation, US humanitarianism, and
implicitly or explicitly the superiority of the white race and western
civilization.
In this light, while specific policies vary, the trajectory of US foreign
policy in the twenty-first century is a continuation of the policies and
programs that were institutionalized in the twentieth century. Three seem
primary. First, military spending, particularly in new technologies, continues
unabated. And a significant Council on Foreign Relations report raises the
danger of the United States “falling behind,” the same metaphor that was used
by the writers of the NSC-68 document, or the Gaither and Rockefeller
Reports composed in the late 1950s to challenge President Eisenhower’s
worry about a military/industrial complex, the response to Sputnik, Secretary
of Defense McNamara’s transformation of the Pentagon to scientific management
in the 1960s, or President Reagan’s huge increase of armaments in the 1980s to
overcome the “window of vulnerability.”
Second, the United States continues to engage in policies recently
referred to as “hybrid wars.” The concept of hybrid wars suggests that while
traditional warfare between nations has declined, warfare within countries has
increased. Internal wars, the hybrid wars theorists suggest, are encouraged and
supported by covert interventions, employing private armies, spies, and other
operatives financed by outside nations like the United States. Also the hybrid
wars concept also refers to the use of economic warfare, embargoes and
blockades, to bring down adversarial states and movements. The blockades of
Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran are examples. So, the hybrid war concept suggests
that wars are carried out by other, less visible, means.
Third, much of the discourse on the US role in the world replicates the
bipolar, superpower narrative of the Cold War. Only now the enemy is China. As
Alfred McCoy has pointed out (In the Shadows of the American Empire, 2017), the
United States in the twenty first century sees its economic hegemony being
undermined by Chinese economic development and global reach. To challenge this,
McCoy argues, the United States has taken on a project to recreate its military
hegemony: AI, a space force, biometrics, new high tech aircraft etc. If the US
cannot maintain its hegemony economically, it will have to do so militarily.
This position is the centerpiece of the recent CFR Task Force Report.
Finally, during the last decade there has emerged rising resistance to
US/European global hegemony, such that some theorists (and US foreign policy
elites) believe that today a global transformation of power is occurring, a
centerpiece of which is the rise of the Global South. In the spirit of the
1950s Non-aligned Movement countries such as China, Russia, India, Brazil, and
South Africa (the BRICS) have begun to talk about increased cooperation
around the transformation of currencies and commerce, foreign assistance,
and technological cooperation. The Trump Administration’s kidnapping of the
president of Venezuela, threats against Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, and others, and
now a war on Iran are designed to forestall the rise of the Global South.
Figure 3: From Monroe Doctrine to Donroe Doctrine, North Meridian Press,
2026.
Imperial Policies in Trump's First Term
Recognizing these continuities in United States foreign policy,
commentators appropriately recognized the idiosyncrasies of foreign policy in
the first Trump administration. He reached out to North Korea and Russia
(which had the potential of reducing tensions in Asia and Central
Europe). He rhetorically claimed that the United States should withdraw
military forces from trouble spots around the world, including the Middle East.
He declared that the United States could not be “the policeman of the world,” a
declaration made by former President Nixon as he escalated bombing of Vietnam
and initiated plans to overthrow the Allende regime in Chile. Some of
these measures which seemed to contradict the Cold War policy agenda Trump was
inappropriately criticized by Democrats and others. Tension-reduction on the
Korean Peninsula, for example, should have been encouraged.
However, while Trump moved in one direction, he almost immediately
undermined the policies he had ordered. His announced withdrawal from Syria,
while in the abstract a sign of a more realistic assessment of US military
presence in the Middle East was coupled with a direct or implied invitation to
the Turkish military to invade Northeast Syria to defeat the Kurds. Also, at
the same time he was withdrawing troops from Syria, the Defense Department
announced the United States was sending support troops to Saudi Arabia. He
withdrew from the accord with Iran on nuclear weapons and the Paris Climate
Change agreement. Time after time, one foreign policy decision was contradicted
by another. These contradictions occurred over and over with allies as well as
traditional adversaries. Sometimes policies seemed to be made with little
historical awareness and without sufficient consultation with professional
diplomats.
Imperial Policies in the Second Trump Term
Candidate Trump ran for reelection in 2024 claiming that the US role in
the world (at least outside the Western Hemisphere) should be reduced. His
would adopt an "America First" strategy.
During his first year he engaged in tariff wars, supported dramatic
increases in military expenditures, and under the guise of pursuing peace gave
support to Israel in its genocidal war against the Palestinian people and
continued both to support the Ukrainian military effort and negotiations with
the Russians as brutal war in Ukraine continued. During his first yearin office
the United States bombed eight countries.And after the administration issued
its National Security Strategy Document in November, 2025, largely endorsed the
drive for remaining the hegemonic power in the Western Hemisphere (the Monroe
Doctrine 2 or the "Donroe Doctrine") while calling for arming the
world to challenge growing Chinese power.
And while the world continued to process Trump's blustery statements,
contradictory calls to action, seemingly words and acts to insult the
traditional allies, a veritable "mad man" approach to US foreign
policy, he made war on Venezuela and carried out the kidnapping of Venezuela's
President and wife.
Subsequently, he has alluded to taking out regimes in Cuba, Colombia, and
Mexico, running the Venezuelan government-particularly its oil sector, and
seizing Greenland from NATO ally, Denmark. And it cannot be forgotten
that the Trump Administration and its allies in Congress authorized a trillion
dollar military budget for 2026.
Processing the Trump foreign policies one is reminded of the old Nixon
idea, the so-called “madman theory.” "Trump thinks that he can
frighten and thus deter opponents by appearing unhinged—an idea that political
scientists call the madman theory. As Trump once boasted, Chinese
President Xi Jinping would never risk a blockade of Taiwan while he
is president because Xi “knows I’m fucking crazy," (Keren Yarhi-Milo,
"How Trump's Foreign Policy is Ruining American Credibility," Foreign
Affairs, October 2, 2025 (Nixon allegedly wanted to appear mad so that
adversaries would be deterred from acting in ways contrary to US interests out
of fear of random responses.
Working for Peace in the 21st Century
The contradictory character of Trump foreign policy has left the peace
movement befuddled. How does it respond to Trump’s occasional acts that go
against the traditional imperial grain while he acts impetuously increasing the
dangers of war? How does the peace movement participate in the construction of
a progressive majority that justifiably seeks to overturn the Trump era and all
that it stands for: climate disaster, growing economic inequality, racism,
sexism, homophobia, and hybrid war? Perhaps the task for the peace movement is
to include, in the project of building a progressive majority, ideas about
challenging the US as an imperial power, proclaiming that a progressive agenda
requires the dismantling of the permanent war economy.
Without illusions, the peace movement must participate in politics: which
includes the electoral arena and lobbying for policy changes including
rekindling the War Powers Act and cutting the trillion dollar military budget..
Articulating a peace agenda, demanding that politicians running for office at
all levels embrace it, and convincingly demonstrating that politicians who
embrace it will be held accountable. Meanwhile, by articulating a peace
platform, activists will be participating in a broad educational effort to
construct a majority “people for peace.”
Finally, peace and social justice movements must articulate and embrace
truly global policies of solidarity in the spirit of the Non-aligned Movement,
the Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, commitments to human
rights, environmental protections, and support for those movements in the
Global South that are pursuing the rights of sovereignty and social and
economic development. While flawed the United Nations system, with its
multiplicity of political, social, economic, and legal organizations provide
the skeletal form of a New World Order.
These are truly troubled times, with to a substantial degree the survival
of humanity and nature at stake. The war system is a significant part of
what the struggle is about and every avenue must be used to challenge it.
Whether it is the mad men theory or traditional imperialism that drives US
pursuit of global hegemony or both, it must be stopped.
Now the first priority is to stop the killings in Iran.
Harry Targ is a political scientist, scholar of U.S. foreign policy, and
longtime activist whose work focuses on imperialism, the political economy of
militarism, and movements for peace and social justice. He is Professor
Emeritus of Political Science at Purdue University, where he taught for several
decades and helped develop programs in peace studies and interdisciplinary
political analysis. Across his career he has written extensively on the
structures of global power, the dynamics of the permanent war economy, and the
role of grassroots organizing in challenging militarism and inequality. Targ is
the author of numerous books and essays addressing U.S. foreign policy, labor
politics, and international solidarity movements. His work has circulated widely
among scholars, activists, and readers interested in critical perspectives on
global capitalism and empire. In recent years his writing has also appeared
frequently in public commentary and blog essays that connect contemporary
political developments to longer historical patterns of war, economic
restructuring, and social struggle. His book, Strategy of an Empire in
Decline, was recently re-released by North Meridian Press, bringing renewed
attention to his analysis of the relationships between U.S. militarism, global
political economy, and the possibilities for democratic movements that
challenge systems of war and domination.
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Wesley R. Bishop
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