A sky white with a frightful whiteness, And the earth like coal and granite. Under this withered moon Nothing shines anymore.

— Anna Akhmatova, 1914

THE train from San Francisco to the heartland of California takes me from the edge of the Pacific Ocean to the core of the San Joaquin Valley. I watch as lavender mountains cast long shadows across the jade waters of the bay, and nightfall unfolds like a blanket covering a child’s nakedness.

The sun has begun to set as we head into the flatland of the valley, the wheels of the train keeping rhythm with my heartbeat. Outside, the vast splendour of this country hurtles past, leaving only a vague memory of the blood which taints its silent landscape, the blood of the many tribes which inhabited this space between ocean and desert, between land and sky.

Two centuries ago the United States was a collection of thirteen small colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. In 1776 American revolutionaries rose up against their colonial master, King George of England, and declared that every nation had the right to determine its own destiny. That the many Indian nations which lived in the “new world” were not considered to be worthy of this right is part of the bloody history of this most powerful nation on earth. That the leaders of the newly independent colonies believed that they were preordained to rule all that stretched before them was part of the manifest destiny of this chosen nation.

By 1848 the United States stretched from the east to the west coast of America. In 1894, calls for empire were echoing through the halls of Washington, with Senator Orville Platt of Connecticut declaring that “I believe that when any territory outside the present territorial limits of the United States become necessary for our defence or essential for our commercial development, we ought to lose no time in acquiring it.” By the next year, the US had declared war on Spain, eyeing its colonies in Cuba and the Philippines. Rebel armies were already fighting for independence in both countries and Spain was on the verge of defeat. Washington declared that it was on the rebel’s side and Spain quickly capitulated, making it clear fairly soon that it had no intentions of leaving.

The era of empire had begun for the newest nation on the imperial block. Elaborate racist theories were formulated to justify colonialism. In the words of Senator Albert Beveridge in the year 1900, “We are the ruling race of the world. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world... He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples.”

The Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam were made US colonies in 1898. Cuba was formally given its independence but along with it the Cubans were given the Platt Amendment which stipulated that the US navy would operate a base in Cuba forever, that the US marines would intervene at will, and that Washington would determine Cuba’s foreign and financial policies.

During the same period, the US overthrew Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani and transformed these Pacific islands into a US navy base surrounded by fruit plantations set up by Dole and Del Monte. In 1903, US President Theodore Roosevelt sent gunboats to secure Panama’s separation from Colombia after that government had refused Roosevelt’s terms for building a canal, hampering the movement of US warships as well as US trade.

Between 1898 and 1934, US marines invaded Cuba four times, Nicaragua five times, Honduras seven times, the Dominican Republic four times, Haiti twice, Guatemala once, Panama twice, Mexico three times and Colombia four times. In many countries the marines stayed on for decades as an occupying army. When the marines finally went home, they typically left the country they had occupied in the hands of a “friendly dictator”, armed to the teeth to suppress his own people.

Behind the marines came legions of US business executives ready not only to sell their goods but also to set up plantations in the manner of latter day Spanish conquistadors who established their feudal estates on latifundios throughout Latin America in the 17th century. Business interests in these new “territories” included drilling for oil and mining for minerals, gold, and precious gems. Marines were often called in to put down the rebellions of workers entrapped in slave-like conditions by their colonial masters. This “intervention” was considered necessary to secure the required environment for American capital.

One of the most celebrated leaders of these marine expeditions, General Smedley Butler, described his career once he had retired as follows: “I spent 33 years in active military service... and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

During the years leading up to World War I, the United States had managed to secure American oil interests in countries as far apart as Mexico and China, it spread sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic and Cuba, and set up fruit companies in Honduras and other Central American countries, giving rise to the term banana republic, another way of describing a sovereign state which had lost its sovereignty to business interests, starving its people by substituting its staple foods for cash crops which would feed what is currently the most obese nation on earth.

The advent of World War I saw European colonial powers scramble for imperial domination over specific spheres of influence. When President Woodrow Wilson decided that the US was to enter the fray, he told his people that he was sending troops to Europe to “make the world safe for democracy”, words which have been echoed for almost a century now by every American president who has disguised the expansionist intent of corporate capitalism by veiling it in the rhetoric of liberation. In 1917, Wilson’s ambassador to England said rather forthrightly that the US would declare war on Germany because it was “the only way of maintaining our present preeminent trade status”, an act which sent 130,274 US soldiers to their deaths by 1918.

The World War 1 was supposed to end all wars. In reality, the years between 1914 and 1918 were a precursor to the savagery which was to come, claiming millions of lives and devastating thousands of miles of war-ravaged countries. In October 1940, as German and Japanese troops were marching in Europe and Asia, a group of prominent government officials, business executives, and bankers was convened by the US State Department and the Council of Foreign Relations to discuss US strategy. The gentlemen present concluded that their country had to prepare for war and come up with an “integrated policy to achieve military and economic supremacy.”

A private memorandum between the Council on Foreign Relations and the State Department, dated 1941, states: “If war aims are stated which seem to be concerned solely with Anglo-American imperialism, they will offer little to people in the rest of the world...the interests of the other peoples should be stressed... this would have a better propaganda effect.”

The “integrated policy” of the United States and allied states led to the death of millions in Europe and 200,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tens of thousands died later from radiation poisoning. At the end of the war, President Harry Truman prayed to God to “guide us in the use of the Bomb in His ways and His purposes.” The sacred intent of genocide was clear — it was the order of the day for the “majority stockholder in this corporation known as the world”, the words of Leo Welch, former chairman of the Board of Standard Oil, now Exxon.

On November 21, 2003, the most powerful conventional bomb in the US arsenal exploded in a huge, fiery cloud on a Florida test range. This nearly 11-ton weapon of mass destruction is fondly referred to as the “mother of all bombs.” An MC-130E Combat Talon I dropped the 9,800-kg satellite-guided GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, or MOAB. Officials said the bomb was developed in only nine weeks to be available for use this past spring in the Iraq war. Its only previous live test came on March 11, the week before the US-led invasion. The MOAB, the most powerful nonnuclear US bomb, carries 8,482 kg of high explosives, detonating just above the ground when the tip of the 9.1-metre-long bomb hits the earth.

The MOAB is envisioned as a successor to BLU-82, the 6,800-kg “Daisy Cutter.” The “Daisy Cutter” was used to clear helicopter landing areas in the Vietnam War and was used in the 1991 Gulf War and in 2001 in Afghanistan. In the latter two conflicts, US commanders used the “Daisy Cutter” partly for the “psychological effect” of such a massive blast.

The United States maintains the largest and most powerful military in history. Military spending amounts to more than half of the federal government’s annual discretionary spending. On November 24, 2003, George W. Bush signed the National Defence Authorization Act enabling the US military to increase its spending to $400 billion. Of this colossal sum, one billion is to be used to develop chemical and biological weapons, while nine billion will go to improve the existing ballistic weapons system. This, in the words of Mr. Bush, was to ensure the “advance of freedom” all over the world, particularly in countries currently under US occupation — Afghanistan and Iraq. This expenditure will go towards the creation of yet more powerful arms in the already overflowing arsenal of the world’s greatest military power.

The writer is United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Population Fund.