Pablo Jofre Leal
American Progress (1872) by John Gast , an allegorical representation of the modernization of the new west. Columbia, personification of the United States, is shown leading civilization westward with the American settlers, bringing light from east to west, stringing telegraph wire, holding a school textbook,[1] highlighting different stages of economic activity and evolving forms of transportation.[2] Wikipedia
This concept of Manifest Destiny appeared for the first time in the United States in an article by journalist John O’Sullivan entitled “Annexation” (as a theoretical support for the forced incorporation of Texas into the young American state) published in the Democratic Review in New York City in 1845, where he stated: “The fulfillment of our manifest destiny is to extend ourselves throughout the continent, assigned by Providence, for the development of the great experiment of freedom and self-government. It is a right like that of a tree to obtain the air and the earth necessary for the full development of its capacities and the growth that it has as its destiny,” a megalomania that expanded in the conflict between the United States and Great Britain over Oregon where O’Sullivan noted “…and this demand is based on the right of our manifest destiny to possess the entire continent that has been given to us by Providence to develop our great experiment in freedom and self-government”. There is a great similarity between imperialism and Zionism.
The influence of the concept and practice of “Manifest Destiny” is expressed throughout American history: in its popular culture, mass media, in the political-military apparatus. In his annual message to the nation in 1904, former President Theodore Roosevelt said, “If a nation shows that it can act with reasonable efficiency and with a sense of social and political expediency, if it maintains order and respects its obligations, it need not fear intervention by the United States. Chronic injustice and the consequent impact of a general relaxation of the rules of a civilized society may require, consequently, in the Americas or elsewhere, the intervention of a civilized nation and, in the Western Hemisphere, the adherence of the United States to the so-called Monroe Doctrine can compel the United States, even if against its wishes, to exercise international police power in flagrant cases of injustice or impotence”.
To speak of this philosophy is to give an account of one of the founding myths of the United States, in which its government and thus the influence it exerts on its society, is explained in terms of the way in which they understand their place in the world and how they should relate to other peoples. Since the so-called founding fathers and the thirteen colonies until the present year 2020, Manifest Destiny has maintained the idea, as a central axis, that God chose the United States to be a superior nation in all areas, mainly: political, economic, military, as a banner of values in the field of democracy, social life, morality and other elements, which populate this deeply supremacist and ultra-nationalist myth.
The most evident manifestation of this doctrine, for the United States, is in the political field, but its essence is profoundly religious and is confirmed by the fact that the English settlers on the East Coast of the territory that was to become the United States were intensely religious, puritanical (a branch of Protestantism) with a communitarian way of life and with political views that adhered to very strict moral standards, convinced that this “New World” (America) was the “Promised Land” where they would fulfill the mission entrusted by God. That is, a mission for a “chosen people” among all the peoples of the world.
“With the independence of the United States, the English colonists would secularize the doctrine as much as possible, which would eventually be established as what we currently know as Manifest Destiny. One of the main justifications for American expansionism is based on this idea of religious origin: the United States must civilize all those races or nations considered repugnant because of their poverty, their situation of chaos at any level, their lack of civilization or because they represent a danger to the security of the American nation. Likewise, the “self-made man” became the American model because he represented the immigrant who succeeded through hard work, competition with others and, above all, by being accountable to God (1).
A fundamental difference between this idea of Manifest Destiny and the Zionist ideal, which arose at the end of the 19th century in Europe, lies in the fact that the latter ideology, forged in the political halls of English billionaires imbued with an appetite for imperial expansion, took advantage of certain religious ideas apparently anchored in Judaism. They were, in fact, persons associated with British imperialism, atheists, determined to exercise their political dominance, and for that reason they exploited the link with Judaism to generate a doctrine centered on an apocryphal Manifest Destiny, sweetened with ideas such as making Palestine a spurious Jewish national home. To return to Zion, these merchants argued for a policy of forced colonization. An idea based on falsehoods, encouraging an “aliyah”, a return to Zion summoned by a mythological belief, since Palestine was “a land without people (making the existing Palestinian people invisible) for a (Jewish) people without a land. A falsehood that is part of the founding myths of what would be, from 1948 onwards, the birth of the entity called Israel.
At the end of 1945, coinciding with the conclusion of the Second World War, the United States of America represented three quarters of the capital invested in the world and two thirds of its industrial capacity. And at the same time they were the first military power in the world expressed in their global presence” (2).
Endowed with nuclear weapons, which they used twice against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 8, 1945, they would maintain that monopoly until the USSR was able to launch its own atomic arsenal. Their participation in the world conflict and the subsequent shaping of the map of world domination made it impossible to return to that policy of isolationism that had marked much of the history of American international relations. Of course, we are talking about the foreign dimension, because in the 19th century its interventions were also evident in Mexico – with the conquest of the current states of California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico – resulting from its opportunistic war against Spain in 1898, which led to the acquisition of the overseas territories of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. And in the first half of the 20th century it was expressed in its invasions and support for coups and dictatorships in Cuba, Nicaragua and El Salvador. All of this was framed in the so-called Monroe Doctrine, which was the destiny reserved by U.S. policy for the peoples of America.
While the other participants in the 1939-1945 world war had become exhausted and their economic infrastructures destroyed, the American giant presented itself to the world as one of the leaders, capable of taking on yet another of the great winners of the SGM: the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The war was an enormous and productive business for the United States, which increased its income from the sale of products in all sectors of the economy in colossal proportions. But, above all, it consolidated an industry that is the pivot of its economy, to this day: the military industry through the strengthening of the so-called military-industrial complex, which signifies the close relationship between the political world, private industry companies, public companies and the military world.
At the end of the SGM, only the United States appeared to be called upon to dominate the world, to lead what is usually called “the free world” even though it is under the influence of Washington. It is the expression of this idea of America’s Manifest Destiny, which journalist and historian Allman T.D. analyzes in his book, “Unmanifest destiny: Mayhem and illusion in American foreign policy–from the Monroe doctrine to Reagan’s war in El Salvador” (1984), where he clearly states that the power vacuum that was produced in a large part of the world, fundamentally due to European division and weakness, in addition to the ideological and territorial expansion of the Soviets, made it necessary to rethink the way foreign policy was implemented, in a country, where until then the situation of dominance was not exclusively based on a territorial presence. Thus, it was not in vain that a network of military bases was established in the world, which today comprises more than 800 bases in the five continents.
Indeed, one of the most important consequences of the end of the MMS, from the point of view of the new correlation of forces that emerged after this contest, was the shift from the United States being a Power, important but not global in scope, to becoming a superpower in all areas and regions of the planet. Consolidating the philosophy of manifest destiny that animates the country. The problem was that the Americans lacked vision regarding what their new role meant, so they transformed anti-communism within and beyond their borders into an ideology, a way of approaching international relations based on a goal that seemed to them to be established: to be the champion of democracy, the defenders of individual and collective freedom of the people, the crusaders in the fight against the worst of regimes, that which denied the possibility of free enterprise and the free market.
A way of life based on the will of the majority, and distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual freedom, freedom of expression and religion” Ideas universally amplified despite the fact that many of them are denied, on their own soil, to millions of blacks, Latinos and other minorities, who generally have fewer possibilities of social advancement. Behind this enemy was a foreign policy that for 45 years maintained the banners of anti-communism until the collapse of the socialist camp.
Following the collapse of its enemy over nearly half a century ago, the United States and its military-industrial complex sought out new enemies required to keep the war industry going.The United States was looking for “rogue states” “outcast states” “enemies of freedom”. Quoien busca encuentra,” says the popular maxim, “and Washington found it, disguised as the world of Islam, drug trafficking, international mafias, organized crime, population explosion, immigrants, and terrorism.
The vision of Manifest Destiny requires establishing the link between the national character of the American people and their foreign policy, especially in one of these aspects: Pragmatism, when it comes to the international game that was being played. Such was the case of the intervention in the Korean War, which revealed a United States that had abandoned the policy of collaboration with the USSR, an enemy that had been declared in Churchill’s speeches in Fulton, as well as in the programmatic orientation of the United States on the basis of the so-called Article X of George Kennann, the basis of the policy of containment of communism.
Following the end of the SGM, the United States deliberately abandoned the policy of collaboration with the former USSR, rejecting the notion of spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, and sought to impose its concept of American democracy, in order to increase its own political and economic power. If we read TD Allman’s book in depth, we can see that this is not so far from the truth because Allamn, as well as other authors of the revisionist movement, constantly quote Kennan and his continuous examination of the famous long telegram as evidence of our affirmation that the essence of the Cold War had in its development a permanent source of errors, misinterpretations, miscalculations by both the Soviets and the Americans about the intentions of the other.
Allman believed that he saw in the attitude of the Soviets, weakened by the devastation of war and concerned about their security within their borders, a fear that the United States would engage in a policy of ideological and military domination – a question which in the light of history was not so far off from what actually happened. On the other hand, the US and its allies believed that they saw in the USSR a kind of Leviathan seeking the ruin of capitalism and the imposition of communism on the whole continent. It is not unusual then that in 1947, Truman, while requesting funds from Congress to help Greece and Turkey deal with the “Communist Threat”, declared that the United States would help anyone who was subject to pressure from the Communists, whether internal or external. This policy along with the idea of containment of the USSR took the form of the well-known Marshall Plan for the economic reconstruction of Europe.
Notes
1. http://sepiensa.org.mx/contenidos/historia_mundo/siglo_xx/eua/destino_man/des_man1a.htm
2. Adams Willi Paul. “The United States of America.” Twenty-oneth century publishers. Madrid, Spain. 1992
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