Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing U.S. Intervention After the Cold War - Softcover

Shalom, Stephen Rosskamm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0896084485 ISBN 13: 9780896084483

Publisher: South End Pr, 1993

Synopsis

Looking at Iraq, Libya, Grenada, Panama, Biafra, the Dominican Republic, Burundi, and other post Cold War hot spots, Shalom carefully documents the pretexts for U.S. intervention.

About this title

Reviews

More a survey of past policies than a guide to the future, this book is a catalog of the hypocrisy of American interventions on the grounds of protecting resources, solving humanitarian crises and curbing terrorism and drugs. Shalom ( The United States and the Philippines ) writes dryly and a bit broadly--ignoring Jimmy Carter's human rights policy, for instance--as he claims that U.S. policies aim to protect the wealthy and are predicated on racism and a sexist/heterosexist glorification of masculinity. Drawing on a wide range of secondary sources, Shalom describes how the U.S. armed Iran and Iraq, why oil from the Persian Gulf is not essential to Western needs and how the U.S. subsidizes tobacco exports while it pursues unproductive drug interdiction efforts in Latin America. Despite professed high principles, he notes, the U.S. has been unwilling to protest mass murder in Biafra, Burundi and elsewhere. An end to U.S. interventions would, Shalom argues somewhat simplistically, "create the space within which popular movements throughout the world could confront the systemic roots of . . . poverty."
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: South End Pr
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0896084485
• ISBN 13: 9780896084483
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 293