Historical overview of American interventions

John Tyler, tenth president of the United States (1841-1845), sought the annexation of
Texas, which won its independence from Mexico in 1836. This reaching out for additional
territory in the west inaugurated (install) a new concept in American thinking, one John L.
OSullivan, editor of The Democratic Review, called Manifest Destiny. His essay in the
Review stated that it is the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the
whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of our great
experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us. (I.e. it is their duty to
spread American values of Democracy, liberty, and equality)
Most Americans felt a sense of honour and national pride, along with a desire to share the
blessings of liberty and democracy, this lead to different interventions under various
pretexts through out the history of USA.
For example , Philippines and Cuba, The situation heated up between Spain and U S A
when, on February 15, 1898, the USS Maine(submarine), on a visit to Havana, was sunk by
an explosion in which 260 officers and sailors perished(died).
In Panama, Roosevelt encouraged Panama, a province of the nation of Colombia, to seek its
freedom in order to allow the building of a canal .later, it gave USA The Hay-Bunau-Varilla
Treaty, signed on November 10, 1903, granted the United States control of a ten-mile zone
across the isthmus (narrow connecting strip of land).
And later on we have The WW 1, Pearl Harbor and Vietnam,
To conclude, American interventions are ideological not political view.
Introduction
After the end of the Cold War there was the emergence of a new imperial language
concerning the new world order. As Zalmay Khalilzad , who was a member of Bush the
father administration in 1991, has expressed it in his book entitled:

from

containment(control) to global leadership, the idea of the preventing, even with the use of
military force if necessary, the rise of any rival power.
The most marking and important development within the neoconservative movement in the
late 1990s was the foundation of the PNAC (project of the new American century) in 1997.
The PNAC was closely and deeply linked to the American Enterprise Institute both
physically and financially, with a slight difference in the main concern because the PNAC
main concern was U.S foreign policy.

In the statement of principles of the PNAC, there was a call for American global leadership
and hegemony. It claimed that the U.S has to resolve to shape new world order favourable to
American principles, values, and interest.
In the dawn of the 21st century, and just few months after the Bush administration took
office, the PNAC published a 76 pages document called the RAD (Rebuilding American
Defense) .
The first steps for realizing the new American empire was the invasion of Afghanistan
which was considered as rogue state and was among the countries which were accused by
the Bush Administration of harbouring(protecting) the terrorists who committed the 9/11
attacks.
By invading Afghanistan, which was first a unilateral (one side) act, the U.S began a new
challenge which was the war on terror and after that the global war on terror.
This was stated clearly in Andrew Bacevich, in his book, American Empire, when he said
that the question before the Americans was not whether the U.S has become an Empire but
only what sort of empire they wanted it to be.
The effect of Bush policy on local and foreign affairs
Unlike his father, the War on terror gave the president more power to pass new laws and
bills. In the fall of 2001 the Patriot Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing
Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) was passed by which the
federal government assumed unparalleled authority to obtain information about the activities
of citizens and apprehend likely terrorists. A second Patriot Act, passed in 2003, expanded
the governments surveillance and secret arrest powers. What troubled many Americans was
the fact that the administration had the unlimited authority to wiretap citizens without first
obtaining a court order. In exercising its increased powers, the government rounded up over
1,000 suspects, some of them American citizens, and locked them up in a camp in
Guantanamo, Cuba. Few were brought to trial. The administration felt it had the right to
bypass the courts in the name of national security.

The invasion of Iraq

The culmination of years of tensions came in 2003, when U.S. President George W. Bush
led a war against Iraq that succeeded in overthrowing Saddam Hussein
The Gulf war and its effect on the area
The 8 year long, war(Iraq, Iran) was costly ,By the time the ceasefire with Iran was signed in
August 1988, Iraq was virtually bankrupt, with most of its debt owed to Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait (rich countries). Iraq pressured both nations to forgive the debts, but they refused.
Iraq also accused Kuwait of exceeding its OPEC quotas and driving down the price of oil,
thus further hurting the Iraqi economy. Thus, Saddam invaded Kuwait, then USA lead a
coalition companies to decolonize Kuwait and put sanctions on Iraq.
Reasons behind U N .USA sanctions on Iraq.
The United States and the United Nations gave several public justifications for involvement
in the conflict, the most prominent being the Iraqi violation of Kuwaiti territorial integrity. In
addition, the United States moved to support its ally Saudi Arabia, whose importance in the
region, and as a key supplier of oil, made it of considerable geopolitical importance.
From 1991 until 2003 the effects of government policy and sanctions regime led to
hyperinflation, widespread poverty and malnutrition (starvation).

More troubling was the fear that Hussein had obtained biological and chemical weapons and
was attempting to obtain uranium deposits from Niger in Africa in order to build weapons
of mass destruction, even though UN weapons inspectors had failed to discover any trace of
WMD (MILITARY weapons of mass destruction) within Iraq.
The trouble with this evidence was that none of it was true. There were no WMD in Iraq; nor
were there connections to Al Qaeda.
Hussein had expelled (rejected) the inspectors in 1998, but then he agreed to their return, and
although he had no WMD he regularly, and foolishly, created problems for the inspectors in
carrying out their assignment. He was also required to produce a full statement of his
countrys weaponry.
The Bush administration, eagerly to start a war with Iraq, chose to believe that the action of
the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein proved he had hidden WMD and therefore had violated the
UN resolution.

Bush went ahead and signalled the start of a U.S/British assault on March 19to topple
(collapse) Hussein. He asserted the claim that the United States has the sovereign authority
to use force in assuring its own national security.
The actual war proceeded rapidly. A coalition of armed forces from a number of European
countries, including Spain, Italy, Poland, and several other nations, was formed. About
150,000 American troops based in Kuwait, along with a smaller British force, swept
northward and overwhelmed the Iraqi army, which melted away.