Imperial Politics In the 21st Century

War, Torture and Killing Fields of Asia

This book about the contemporary history of direct and indirect US imperialist intervention in Asia. More specifically it focuses on the US military invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, US backing of Israel's invasion and colonial occupation of Palestine and Washington's support for the violent and repressive Macapagal regime in the Philippines. The “killing Fields of Asia” reflects on Washington's long history of neo-colonial wars against national liberation movements over the past 50 years. The historic record is gruesome in the extreme: Korea (1950-53)- 4 million civilians killed; Vietnam (1962-1975) nearly 5 million; Cambodia and Laos (1965-1975) close to 2 million; Iraq (2003 to present) over 650,000; Afghanistan (2001-present) scores of thousands; and many hundreds of thousands killed in counter-insurgency wars in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, East Timor and Elsewhere. The spread of the US empire is no based on free markets and democracy as its apologist claim, but on state violence and client collaborator regimes. Today the 'Killing Fields' are a direct result of the US 'War on Terror', a euphemism for wars of conquest and destruction. The motivating forces projecting war in the Middle East especially the invasion of Iraq and war threats against Iran are the civilian militarists and their allies among the 'Zionist Power Configuration'. In Latin America civilian militarists and multinational corporations seek to oust popular nationalist presidents like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. In a word, state violence is the midwife of empire. The installation of puppet electoral regimes beholden to imperial need, as in the Philippines, has not and does not curtail the violent propensities of imperial imperatives: it just provides a superficial veneer of 'legitimacy' for international mass media consumption. This book argues that empire building in which the imperial state is intimately involved, not globalization based on open markers, is what defines the modern world. The principle point is that with and without electoral architecture, the defining features of contemporary Asia is the continuing struggle between US imperial power and its local clients and the popular peasant, Urban poor and workers movements on the other.