Exporting Democracy essays

Exporting Democracy essays Since its inception, America has been steeped into the view that it is an extraordinary nation, a city on a hill, a beacon of hope and continues to this day to bask in the glory. What began as Puritan declaration and Jeffersonian thought aimed at promoting a societal reconstruction has now been coupled with economic and militaristic superiority to represent a much more complicated ideology. At the forefront of this consciousness stands the American democracy, and after Alexis DeTocqueville published Democracy in America in the 1800s, America became the envy of the world, or at least thats what the high school history teachers said. The close of World War II marked the end of global imperialism and ushered in a policy that called for systemic decolonization of some of the heftiest land-grabs in history. America never prided itself as an empire, at least not publicly. Post-Cold War politics, however, left the United States as the worlds only remaining superpower- an unchecked force that regularly exercises imperial privileges, all in the name of democracy. Between 1989 and 1999, we invaded Panama, smashed Iraq, intervened in Somalia, invaded Haiti, launched air strikes on Bosnia, fired missiles at Baghdad, Sudan, and Afghanistan and destroyed Serbia. We also imposed embargoes on Libya, Iran, Iraq, and dozens of other states. In every single conflict, America portrayed itself as the protector of the free world...a protector of democracy. In a speech to his constituency, Martin Luther King, Jr. said in 1963: Dont let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be, a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, Youre too arrogant. And if you dont change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power. ...Forty years la...