USA as Policeman of the World Thesis

USA as Policeman of the World

THESIS STATEMENT AND OUTLINE FOR A PAPER ON THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF AMERICAN MILITARY ACTIONS ABROAD, 2009-2014

The industrialization and imperialism that followed the U.S. Civil War would have a permanent effect on American military and foreign policy. Yet the aspect of American policy during the Civil War that has had the most relevance during the past five years of American history is particularly unexpected -- we must look to President Abraham Lincoln's most controversial act during the conflict, which was the suspension of habeas corpus, for a proper point of comparison with American military policy in the new millennium. To borrow a phrase from Glenn Greenwald, the Al-Awlaki killings demonstrate that "the due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now a reality." (Greenwald 2011). Tracing these events to U.S. foreign policy during the Civil War will necessarily entail a focus on two earlier events: Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, and the eventual American plunge into outright imperialism following the Spanish-American War under McKinley.

OUTLINE

(A) This paper will focus on two incidents of American military and foreign policy from the past five years: the 2011 Operation Neptune Spear, in which the U.S. Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan, and the 2011 killings of Anwar Al-Awlaki and his son Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki by Predator Drones in Yemen. The significance of these events indicates a gradual erosion (justified as part of the "War on Terror") of habeas corpus rights and recognition of international law -- this significance will be established more completely with the Al-Awlaki drone killings than with the Bin Laden killing, as both Al-Awlakis were born in the United States and were thus U.S. citizens who had been classified as enemy combatants essentially at the whim of the government.

(B) Three aspects of U.S. history since 1865 that led to the U.S.'s rise as a world super-power policeman would entail an examination of (B-1) the Spanish-American War and the subsequent U.S. annexation of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and other territories;

(B-2) the establishment of the Cold War balance of power in the latter half of the 20th century, in which America's military and financial clout was used to fight proxy wars with the Soviets in places like Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Grenada, and Afghanistan; and (B-3) the collapse of the Soviet Union followed rapidly by 9/11 and the War on Terror, in which the Cold War-era military-industrial complex was repurposed for an enemy without a state, and thus a "war" that defies all established 20th century rules of warfare.

(C ) Five incidents since World War II in which America has taken a policing role -- which might conceivably be used to contextualize and understand the focal issue of the paper (which is the Bin Laden and Al-Awlaki killings) -- would be as follows.