David Michael Smith - Endless Holocausts: Mass Death in the History of the United States Empire

Mass Death in the History of theUnited States Empire

David Michael Smith

MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS

New York

Copyright 2023 by David Michael Smith

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the publisher.

ISBN paper: 978-1-58367-9890

ISBN cloth: 978-1-58367-9906

Typeset in Minion Pro

MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS, NEW YORK

monthlyreview.org

5 4 3 2 1

for Rona

I am deeply grateful to all the researchers who responded to my inquiries and shared their expertise while I was writing this book. Many thanks to Mikaela Morgane Adams, Jeffrey S. Adler, Fred Anderson, George Reid Andrews, Andy Baker, Francisco Balderrama, Douglas A. Blackmon, Peter K. Brecke, D. Brian Burghart, Donald S. Burke, Colin G. Calloway, E. Ann Carson, Stephen K. Cusick, James P. Daughton, James Downs, Douglas R. Egerton, James Fenske, Elsa Gelpi, Dina Gilia-Whitaker, Arline Geronimus, Erik Gilbert, Thavolia Glyph, Peter C. Gtzsche, Sandra Elaine Greene, Gerald Horne, Robert Gudmestad, Joseph Hanlon, Jeffrey Hilgert, Joseph E. Inikori, Robin D. G. Kelley, Martin Klein, Bruce Lanphear, Patrick Manning, Emily Marquez, Stephen Majeski, Keith Meyers, Joseph Miller, Vicente Navarro, Jeffrey Ostler, Gary Potter, Robert Proctor, Daniel T. Reff, George Andrews Reid, Richard Reid, Rebecca Reindel, Andrs Resndez, Javier Rodriguez, Nigel Rollins, Randolph Roth, Francisco A. Scarano, Michael Schroeder, Nancy Shoemaker, David Stark, David A. Swanson, Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Russell Thornton, Fred A. Wilcox, and Brian Glyn Williams.

It is worth emphasizing that none of these researchers is responsible for the analysis and conclusions in this book, and the responsibility for any errors is entirely mine. I also want to thank Greg Broyles, Angelita Chapa, Patty Harlan, Folko Mueller, Paul Mullan, Tracy Orr, Pat Thompson, and Fred A. Wilcox for reading and providing feedback on various chapters. My greatest debt is to Rona E. Smith, my wife, who encouraged me to write this book, read earlier versions of the chapters, and shared important ideas for improving them. It is no exaggeration to say that this book would not have been written without Ronas steadfast support.

For generations, capitalists, politicians, and pundits have promoted the doctrine of U.S. exceptionalism. Scores of millions of people in this country have embraced what Christian Appy has called the central tenet of American national identitythe broad faith that the United States is a unique force for good in the world, superior not only in its military and economic power, but in the quality of its government and institutions, the character and morality of its people, and its way of life. In the 1960s and 1970s, mass movements against racism and the wars in Southeast Asia exposed this myth to tens of millions of people. In the decades that followed, the deteriorating conditions of workers, growing inequality, increasingly dysfunctional governance, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the persistence of police brutality, the opioid crisis, and climate change further undermined this dogma. More recently, the resurgence of white supremacy, the erosion of U.S. primacy in the world, the transformation of the Republicans into a far-right party, the rise of Donald Trump, the hundreds of thousands of preventable COVID-19 deaths, and the fascist-led attack on Congress on January 6, 2021, have led many more people to abandon their illusions about this country.

That the United States is a colonialist and imperialist countryan empirecan hardly be questioned. The conquest and near-extermination of several hundred Indigenous nations by European and U.S. settlers provided the land on which the contiguous United States was built, and Native peoples continue to live in colonial conditions, deprived of sovereignty and self-determination. The United States also colonized Liberia, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, the eastern Samoan Islands, the Philippines, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Panama, which Washington carved out of Colombia to build a transoceanic canal, and Cuba were U.S. protectorates for decades. The United States recognized the independence of Liberia in 1847 and the Philippines in 1946 and admitted Alaska and Hawaii as states in 1959 but refused to relinquish the Panama Canal Zone until 1999 and still occupies forty-five square miles of land and water at Guantnamo Bay, Cuba.

Today the United States officially includes not only the fifty states and the District of Columbia but also 574 federally recognized Indigenous nations, the commonwealths of Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands, the inhabited territories of Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and nine uninhabited islands and atolls in the Pacific and the Caribbean.

In addition to its long history of conquest and colonization, the United States has always energetically exploited other peoples resources, markets, and labor. The enslaved labor of people of African descent fueled early U.S. economic development and the Industrial Revolution. By the 1820s, U.S. merchants were shipping opium from Turkey to China so they could sustain imports of tea, spices, porcelain, and nankeen. As Greg Grandin has noted, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 announced to European empires that Latin America fell under Washingtons exclusive sphere of influence. In stark contrast, after acquiring most of Spains colonies in 1898, the United States demanded an Open Door for U.S. trade and investment in China and did not even consult its government.

The U.S. Empires imperatives of expansion and accumulation have dramatically grown in the era of modern imperialism, and so has its exploitation of the resources, markets, and labor of people in other countries. As Grandin has explained, in the early decades of the twentieth century American corporations and financial houses came to dominate the economies of Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, as well as large parts of South America. To protect its investments and promote its interests, the empire militarily intervened in the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and invaded and occupied Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

Industry, agriculture, and trade grew significantly when the United States funded and armed, and then joined the Entente Powers during the First World War. Afterward, the United States invaded Soviet Russia, supported the Guomindang regime in China, and welcomed European fascism as a bulwark against communismentering the Second World War only because the Axis powers threatened its own imperialist interests. By 1945, the United States had become the wealthiest and most powerful empire in the world. Since then, the imperium has vigorously sought to obtain the oil, strategic materials, and other resources it requires and to keep, in the words of Harry Magdoff, as much as possible of the world open for trade and investment by the giant multinational corporations.

These imperatives led to unrelenting confrontation with the Soviet Union and other socialist statesat horrific human expense. The later collapse of most of these states, which occurred partly because of U.S. actions over the decades, made the world a more dangerous place as the empire found itself to be the sole superpower and moved to establish its presence in those and other lands. Since 1945, the United States has fought devastating large-scale wars in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan. It has launched proxy wars on four continents, routinely attacked countries, overthrown and installed governments, destroyed popular movements, assassinated foreign leaders, engaged in economic sabotage, and supported its allies violent domestic repression and acts of war against other nations. The only country to ever use atomic bombs, the United States has deployed nuclear weapons around the world, developed ominous plans to win a nuclear war, and brought humanity to the brink of nuclear holocaust on several occasions.