Has US intervention EVER benefited another country?

Since I actually started to care about politics in Summer 2000 I've naturally read a lot of books about US foreign policy. Like it or not, the US is the global hegemon with bases in over a hundred countries. It has intervened in many other countries' internal politics but the effects have almost always been bad for the nation concerned.

It's an unremittingly appalling record.

And it's compounded by the US' image of itself as a country that actively - even aggressively, it's sometimes said - promotes democracy.

Of course, a clear-eyed look at the evidence shows that this is not the case. The US invariably acts to subvcert democracy and put down popular movements.

Can anyone provide me with an example of the US doing good? Funnily

I'd just like to offer two exceptions which I'm ruling out: Germany and Japan. Germany, because as we know, the US financial elite, through Harriman Brown Bros' bank and Prescott Bush, financed the industrialists who brought Hitler to power. So the post-war Marshall Plan (which had to be repaid, btw) had a lot to do with rebuilding Europe so it could buy US production surpluses.

Japan was rebuilt and restructured to be able to act as a bulwark against China.

Now that's two countries out of the way, still well over a hundred left... did the US do any good in any of them?

South Korea comes to mind. So does Granada and Panama.

I get your point though. US intervention always seems less about the foreign country being helped and more about helping US Corporations to that country's resources. The CIA has NOT been about American security, but has from day one been about getting the cheapest access for American companies to foreign assets.

Sure, whether or not that other country should have benefited from the situation however, may or may not be the case.

Take Kuwait for example in the first gulf war. Kuwait, wasn't exactly the innocent little country most people think it was in that whole situation. The surely benefited from US involvement though.

Yes most notably South Korea... they just love us....
Now the philippines were that way too...up until that whole Corazon Aquino thing back in the 1980's.... but that had nothing with the US

the truth is there have been several countries that wanted needed and were glad for our help...people seemed to remember the bad more than they do the good

I'm sure you can find some good things we do -- we give a lot of money away (not sure why that's good) to places all over the world. Even Gaza has received dollars from the US (although I'm sure none of it ends up in the hands of the people who need it the most).

I think you're right, though. Our foreign aid is one big ruse to keep America on top of everybody else. Sometimes that means installing/supporting the worst of the worst scumbag dictators you could ever imagine (Saddam Hussein included in that list). Most of our dominance comes from economic policies, though. We keep Africans and Mexicans in poverty by subsidizing corn. We act through the world bank and IMF to put third world countries into debt slavery. We keep the currency afloat through strict dollar denominated oil. We spend nearly 10x more on our defense budget than the closest competitor country -- china -- who only spends 70 billion compared to our 650 billion annually.

And our media plays along with all this, seemingly oblivious to any misdeeds on America's part. The only thing you'll hear from the MSM about our atrocities in the world is that anyone who brings it up is "unamerican" and in the "blame America first" crowed. Any grass roots campaigns that get started are always "whack job liberals" or "gun toting conservative terrorists." God forbid people actually organize and take control of the government back.

What are you going to do, though. As long as we don't have a functioning media, we're going to continue living in voluntary totalitarianism. Some people seem to enjoy it that way.

In world war 2. In France. There you go. I was right

reply to post by groingrinder


South Korea... Korea was a country divided between the US and Russia who then fought proxy hegemonic wars. US occupation is not something that the South necessarily wants any more than that they want to be under Kim Jong-Il's heel.

Grenada. How did that benefit, exactly? The US invaded, pretending to rescue some students, shot the place up, deposed Maurice Bishop, which was the whole point, and then left. I can say from personal experience that none of the people I spoke to there felt any gratitude to the US for its little escapade.

Panama. No. You need to take a good look at The Panama Deception.

The US invasion was far more of a rampage than was exposed in the Western press. Thousands of people died for the ostensible reason of "bringing to justice" one of Bush's drug dealing partners.

reply to post by Unit541


You know I was starting to think you had a point there... and then I remembered that the US pretty much conned Saddam into invading.

Just to recap... anyone know why Saddam invaded? The Kuwaitis were doing two things that directly threatened Iraq: they were over-producing on their OPEC quotas and thus messing with the price of oil: but more directly, they were slant-drilling across the border into Iraqi oil fields.

A couple of months before the invasion, Saddam had a special visit from a US envoy called April Glaspie, who conveyed a very specific message: she actually said, and this is in the minutes of the meeting, that the US had "no opinion" on Iraq's disputes with its neighbour and that it wanted to see those disputes resolved quickly.

That's a green light to someone like Saddam.

It's also interesting that April Glaspie is under a gag order to this day. She can't ever speak about that meeting.

Edit because I forgot to mention that I read (in the Journal of Foreign Relations, the in-house magazine of the CFR) that the US actually turned a profit on Gulf War I: they'd got quite a few nations to kick in monetary support for the venture, and there was a little left over in the kitty at the end of the day. How nice.

It's also not irrelevant that the US went from being the number five arms dealer in the region before the war, to the number one, shortly after.

[edit on 10-7-2009 by rich23]

reply to post by DaddyBare


The Philippines? You're kidding, right?

You need to read Mark Twain on the invasion of the Philippines by the US. A very bloody and nasty business which Twain quite rightly exposed, and excoriated the humbug of those who were saying what wonderful things the US was doing.

I read this just as the US was about to invade Iraq and the parallels were stunning.

The US maintained control of the Philippines all the way through to Marcos, keeping a small oligarchy in power and ensuring that most of the population lived in abject poverty. There was a brief democratic blip but they soon got control back again.

You need to ask yourself, if the US does such wonderful things around the world, why are most of the countries where it has dominance so shockingly poor?

Think about England, France, etc during world war II.

For that matter think about the countries that lost world war II.

I think that the US has done many good things in it's history and some bad things.

But, it is not always the villain.

reply to post by truth_seeker3


WWII, where the Nazis were financed by Harriman Brown Brothers?

More to the point, the US interfered widely in Europe to undermine the democratic process in the post-war period. In a truly democratic country, you should be able to vote Communist if you want. But the US' rabid anti-communist stance meant that was not to be allowed. I'm not defending communism here, btw: I'm defending the concept of democratic choice. It's not down to America to narrow the range of choices available to others.

reply to post by Wildbob77


You just didn't read the OP very carefully, did you?

It's also the case that Marshall Plan aid was not given freely. It had to be repaid, and the terms under which it was lent in the first place involved Britain ceding much of its juiciest trading agreements with its past and present colonies to the US

reply to post by rich23

My apologies. I didn't get past the title before I responded.

reply to post by Wildbob77


Very gracious, sir.

A mistake I'm sure we've all made.